magic dissonance in 5e

[spartan_ah]

I find itweird that in 5e, magic users are very common. there is no 1 class that lacks the use of magic powers...
yet the absence of magical items is popular.
I understand the mechanic concept behind it, but thematically it's pretty weird that even a common rogue can cast spells, yet no magical items to be found easily

[Ferrin33]

There's only so many non-magical classes or archetypes you can make before they all look alike. Magic allows a lot more diversity, and the Fighter, barbarian, and rogue all have non-magical archetypes. All of them have one magical archetype too, but that just adds diversity, the other archetypes aren't suddenly magical. And while there are a lot more magical archetypes in total, that doesn't mean a world is equally inhabited by each of these archetypes, there could be a hundred champion fighters for every eldritch knight out there.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Yeah, when creating a setting, you have to think about how many people in the world have class levels, how many are over 3rd level (where AT and EK and shadow monk develop magic), etc.

I prefer settings where only 1 in 100 or so have class levels at all, and only a handful of them have multiple levels. It's fair to describe magic as 'rare' in such settings, even if it doesn't seem that way to the PCs (who live extraordinary lives).

[dropbear8mybaby]

I prefer settings where only 1 in 100 or so have class levels at all, and only a handful of them have multiple levels. It's fair to describe magic as 'rare' in such settings, even if it doesn't seem that way to the PCs (who live extraordinary lives).

In my homebrew I use the S. John Ross Medieval Demographics to determine population density and include in that calculation a roughly 0.0001%, or roughly 1 in every 10,000 people, with classes. I also limit classes by saying that knowledge is power. In medieval and ancient societies, the elite restricted power through access to training. I also say that very few people can be trained. Very few people having above the average (10's in all stats, plus & minus racial modifiers) stats so they don't even have the capability of learning a class (I require a minimum 13 in the primary stat of the class to even be considered for training).

All of this means that levelled people are exceptionally rare. People notice the PC's simply by them walking around and the PC's have to actively try to hide their nature if they don't want to be noticed.

[JellyPooga]

Hmm, I think I disagree with the OP in principle, but it is an interesting observation, nonetheless.

The "common rogue" doesn't have access to spells. Arcane Trickster is an option for player characters, sure, but your average street urchin pickpocket, if he ever reaches the lofty heights of 3rd level, would probably be modeled as a Thief Archetype anyway. Just as the "common warrior" probably isn't even a Fighter, but if he were, he wouldn't be an Eldritch Knight (an archetype that just screams Nobility to me; Top-nobs hob-nobbing with their nobby friends in Wizard school, shoving the nerdy kids around, playing sports, probably drinking and partying lots instead of studying...why do you think they have limited access to the Wizard list and less spells/day? EK's are the jocks of Wizard School!)

[EggKookoo]

In a campaign I'm planning, there's something biologically "odd" about people who can go on to gain PC classes. The vast majority of people are 0th-level NPC commoner types.

The percentage has varied historically between 1% and 5% of the population. At the timeframe we'll be playing, it's at an all time low and many experts in the subject believe that whatever it is that's allowing these special people is fading from the population completely. Of course there's a reason for all this in my backstory.

[dropbear8mybaby]

The percentage has varied historically between 1% and 5% of the population.

If you crunch the numbers, especially using S. John Ross' Medieval Demographics Calculator (an excellent implementation of which can be found here: http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/demographics/), you'll find that 1% is huge and actually as prevalent as you would see in a setting like the Forgotten Realms or Eberron. You might want to consider dropping the percentage to be more along the lines of 1 in 10,000.

[Joe the Rat]

All of this means that levelled people are exceptionally rare. People notice the PC's simply by them walking around and the PC's have to actively try to hide their nature if they don't want to be noticed.
That makes Folk Hero an interesting case - even though you've got all that PC-ness about you, the common folk still think of you as one of theirs. You might have an easier time blending in, if it weren't for the adoring fans.


It is possible to have a lot of magic, and not a lot of magic items, if the creation of items is supposed to be difficult or not well known. A lot of settings roll with "powerful lost knowledge of the ancients" for your permanent magic items. This is something deep in D&D's roots. Once upon a time, you had to be high level, and be willing to give up a point of Constitution to make one magic item. There's not a lot of incentive for magic-users to burn their life force to make a magic sword when you could potentially find a better one with slightly less of a chance of permanent damage.

It also makes those magic items more special - taking it more to the idea of permanent, sustained enchanted items being things of legend, rather than a part of your complete level advancement. Every magic sword is special, unique, and probably has a name and story attached to it. Rather than just getting a magic sword, it might be the about searching out the resting place of Excaliber/ur/re/urn, or breaking into the ancient vaults of the Emperor to steal Kusanagi, or happen upon Glamdring in the loot of a random encounter with "trolls."

If there is something relatively plentiful, it should be the consumables. In this edition, scrolls are pretty easy to make, even for the PCs. A little gold should get you a roll of parchment. Likewise, potions of healing can be made without having to be a spellcaster at all. These things should be relatively common in treasure, and may be on-market for the well-to-do, or those who know where to look.

[EggKookoo]

If you crunch the numbers, especially using S. John Ross' Medieval Demographics Calculator (an excellent implementation of which can be found here: http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/demographics/), you'll find that 1% is huge and actually as prevalent as you would see in a setting like the Forgotten Realms or Eberron. You might want to consider dropping the percentage to be more along the lines of 1 in 10,000.

I was thinking about that after I made my post. I'm planning a world population of only about 4.5 million (lots of uninhabitable land, lots of devastation), but yeah, that still results in a lot. I was also thinking that these special "PC types" only manifest in young adolescence -- say 12 or so -- but don't tend to start adventuring until they're 17 or 18. They experience a disproportionate amount of young death due to their lifestyle, and most that don't die young probably retire from active adventuring around 40-ish but go on to live until they're 70 or so. So of X% of "PC types" only about 40% are running around adventuring.

But still, that results in a high of ~90,000 active "PC types" and a low of ~18,000. That's definitely too many still, so I think I'll take your general advice and cut that by a factor of 10.

[Ninja_Prawn]

If you crunch the numbers, especially using S. John Ross' Medieval Demographics Calculator (an excellent implementation of which can be found here: http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/demographics/), you'll find that 1% is huge and actually as prevalent as you would see in a setting like the Forgotten Realms or Eberron. You might want to consider dropping the percentage to be more along the lines of 1 in 10,000.

There's low-magic, and then there's ultra-low-magic. If 1 in 10,000 have class levels, and maybe half of those are spellcasters, a metropolis on the scale of Baldur's Gate will have 5 or 6 spellcasters. Of which maybe one of them has third-level spells. That closes off a lot of storytelling options in my opinion, and makes it difficult for the civilian authorities to do anything about spellcasting PCs, should they need to.

I feel you can have a decent number (like 1 in 200 or so) of 1st-level bards, clerics and wizards running around without violating the name 'low-magic'. Maybe not so many sorcerers and warlocks.

[Logosloki]

I find itweird that in 5e, magic users are very common. there is no 1 class that lacks the use of magic powers...
yet the absence of magical items is popular.
I understand the mechanic concept behind it, but thematically it's pretty weird that even a common rogue can cast spells, yet no magical items to be found easily

The dissonance comes from mechanics. People like the idea of being able to be a caster (of any flavour, seriously, there is arcane, divine, nature, music, innate and eldritch horror to choose from) but at the same time are either wary or more likely their DM is wary of magical items.

It also complicates the world in terms of setting and in terms of what the DM feels is necessary to balance the work/play relationship of a roleplaying game.

[Person_Man]

It's pretty easy to conceive of a world where magic is somewhat common but magic items are or rare. You just have to write a coherent magic system where magic is the product of life force (or belief, or souls, or connection to a divine being, etc). Thus, anyone with a strong life force and/or sufficient experience can use magic, but imbuing it into an item literally ages you or makes you weaker or whatever, and thus is rare, though possible.

But D&D doesn't have a coherent fluff. It's "default fantasy" on purpose, because it wants the largest possible audience, and it wants DMs to have the freedom to run whatever type of campaign they want, without having the fluff written into the crunch.

[dropbear8mybaby]

It is possible to have a lot of magic, and not a lot of magic items, if the creation of items is supposed to be difficult or not well known.

Well the default item creation rules in 5e require a recipe. The recipe is the limiting factor for creation. That would be something that would be heavily guarded and highly sought after and not something that people would want floating around for anyone to get their hands on. It'd sort-of be like the ancient fantasy medieval equivalent of state secrets like how to build a spy drone or stealth fighter.

Also, there's a variant rule for quirks for magical items. I seriously love these as they give even a boring old +1 sword a potential that can be used as inspiration to develop into a storied history of the item. What's more, the chances of getting a drawback of some kind on the item is actually pretty high I've found. Repulsion, evil thoughts, pain, being noticed and hunted for the item, etc. These types of things would also limit their desirability and proliferation. Seriously, check it out (p. 142-143 DMG), it's awesome.

[EggKookoo]

There's low-magic, and then there's ultra-low-magic. If 1 in 10,000 have class levels, and maybe half of those are spellcasters, a metropolis on the scale of Baldur's Gate will have 5 or 6 spellcasters. Of which maybe one of them has third-level spells. That closes off a lot of storytelling options in my opinion, and makes it difficult for the civilian authorities to do anything about spellcasting PCs, should they need to.

This will actually be a point in my campaign. Most "PC types" go on to basically become the rulers. Each city, town, etc., is run by a retired high-level adventurer, or a council of such. Others have founded or assumed control over universities, libraries, and so on. The general population has mixed feelings about these guys, akin to how we view celebrities and politicians. Some hate them just on principle, others view them as a necessary evil. Some love them almost to the point of worship, while others appreciate the good they do (when they do good) and decry the evil the do (when they do evil).

[Ralanr]

I find it odd that the concept of antimagic is incredibly rare in D&D.

[zinycor]

In a campaign I'm planning, there's something biologically "odd" about people who can go on to gain PC classes. The vast majority of people are 0th-level NPC commoner types.

The percentage has varied historically between 1% and 5% of the population. At the timeframe we'll be playing, it's at an all time low and many experts in the subject believe that whatever it is that's allowing these special people is fading from the population completely. Of course there's a reason for all this in my backstory.

Midichlorians?

[Ralanr]

In a campaign I'm planning, there's something biologically "odd" about people who can go on to gain PC classes. The vast majority of people are 0th-level NPC commoner types.

The percentage has varied historically between 1% and 5% of the population. At the timeframe we'll be playing, it's at an all time low and many experts in the subject believe that whatever it is that's allowing these special people is fading from the population completely. Of course there's a reason for all this in my backstory.


Midichlorians?

I actually pictured the fable series.

[EggKookoo]

Midichlorians?

Hopefully a little more sophisticated than that, but it's a similar idea. Think "smart virus."

[Ralanr]

Hopefully a little more sophisticated than that, but it's a similar idea. Think "smart virus."

So pokerus?

[EggKookoo]

So pokerus?

I had to Google that one. Only one of my players is into Pokemon so while she may see a similarity I doubt it will be a problem.

If I was concerned about the originality of a concept I wouldn't be able to get anything done. It's all about the execution.

[Ralanr]

I had to Google that one. Only one of my players is into Pokemon so while she may see a similarity I doubt it will be a problem.

If I was concerned about the originality of a concept I wouldn't be able to get anything done. It's all about the execution.

It really isn't. Sometimes people like to point out similar ideas. Though I can understand why that may annoy people.

[Stan]

I find itweird that in 5e, magic users are very common. there is no 1 class that lacks the use of magic powers...
yet the absence of magical items is popular.
I understand the mechanic concept behind it, but thematically it's pretty weird that even a common rogue can cast spells, yet no magical items to be found easily

The idea that magic items are rare is also at odds with published adventures - not Monty Haul but only slightly less than 3e. It's like designers didn't really want to deal with item creation rules so said "just fudge it, items are rare."

[EggKookoo]

It really isn't. Sometimes people like to point out similar ideas. Though I can understand why that may annoy people.

Pointing out similarities is a non-issue for me. I'm aware they exist.

Getting hung up on the similarities just means the person isn't widely-enough read. If one thinks one's "original" idea is truly original, it just betrays one's ignorance. Dig deeply enough and you'll find someone else has already done it in one form or another. Like I said, if I let that stop me, I'd be frozen. I can probably find a half-dozen similar ideas to any given concept (some more obscure than others, of course). This isn't to say there are no truly original ideas left, but there aren't many and mostly the originality comes in the form of the specific expression rather than the core concept.

There are degrees of this, of course. If I tried to implement a concept that was clearly just lifted from something recent and popular, I could understand why my players would greet that with a yawn. But as I said, my players are largely ignorant of Pokemon, so it's not like they'd be making that comparison in the backs of their heads all the time. And most of them (including me) kind of despise the way Ep I handled the midichlorian thing and would be happy to see an "improved" version.

[tieren]

Just curious, for the posters that are discussing worlds where beings with levels are exceptionally rare (1 in 10,000) by the time the PC's are higher level (say 12-15) wouldn't you want town guards to at least have 4-5 levels on them? Seems otherwise you would be able to just decimate towns and villages on a whim.

I'd prefer to see a sergeant or something at level 8 leading a squad of 4-5 level 4 guardsmen at that point as a fairly common thing. Probably with a garrison chaplain cleric and an on call wizard available if something arcane threatens. Maybe even make municipal community service a requirement of the kingdom wizard school for young casters.

I guess I just like a little more high fantasy with everything ramped up a bit more from the mundane, but wandering around with 150 hp when most of the population has 6hp just seems weird.

I was actually just thinking this morning was that we should have levels for commoners so you could have a 9th level blacksmith or a 5th level baker Give them d4 hit dice and they could learn new recipes or something as they level up, but generally make the population a little tougher.

[Stan]

I was actually just thinking this morning was that we should have levels for commoners so you could have a 9th level blacksmith or a 5th level baker Give them d4 hit dice and they could learn new recipes or something as they level up, but generally make the population a little tougher.

Maybe that's why orcs hide out in the hills. They're tired of getting their butts kicked by villages of 5th level farmers and shepherds.


My assumption is 1-2% of the population has class levels but that levels >3 are very rare. So most villages will have a healer capable of 1st level spells but higher level characters are extremely rare, Given an economy only somewhat better that realistic medieval/renaissance, magic items are rare due to economic reasons as well as the rarity of creators. If a potion of healing is a month's wages for an average person, not many people will buy. A truly rare item costs as much as a small castle and most would rather opt for the castle. What would make you feel safer, +2 armor or a dozen guards paid well enough to be loyal for life?

[EggKookoo]

I was actually just thinking this morning was that we should have levels for commoners so you could have a 9th level blacksmith or a 5th level baker Give them d4 hit dice and they could learn new recipes or something as they level up, but generally make the population a little tougher.

D&D 3e did this with its NPC classes.

I'm going to have two basic d8 NPC types -- a "tough" NPC with a +2 CON bonus and +2 proficiency bonus, and a "regular" NPC with neither. The "tough" types will also have proficiency in some particular armor and/or weapon. Basically, "tough" NPCs will be roughly on par with 1st level PCs.

[Ralanr]

Considering the stats for guards (or whatever the Noble's bodyguards are) I think NPC's are just suppose to be weak. Then we have the thug NPC who I think is stronger than a guard, and a gladiator that beats them both. Mind you this is only physical martials.

I find it a little odd that the bodyguards for Nobles suck. I'm AFB though so I might be misinterpreting.

I still think the concept of anti magic should be more common. Cause describing sorcerers as rare gets pointless when the class doesn't represent that. Magic is pretty damn common, especially since the only given defense against magic is magic.

[pwykersotz]

Just curious, for the posters that are discussing worlds where beings with levels are exceptionally rare (1 in 10,000) by the time the PC's are higher level (say 12-15) wouldn't you want town guards to at least have 4-5 levels on them? Seems otherwise you would be able to just decimate towns and villages on a whim.

If a party of four adventurers aren't able to conquer a small village and drive the populace into hiding/death by level 12-15, something is terribly wrong. The Kingdom may have retainers to be able to handle them, but PC's are not just special by that point, they are elite.

[Morty]

There's only so many non-magical classes or archetypes you can make before they all look alike.

You can totally do it; WotC just never really bothered.

[dropbear8mybaby]

Just curious, for the posters that are discussing worlds where beings with levels are exceptionally rare (1 in 10,000) by the time the PC's are higher level (say 12-15) wouldn't you want town guards to at least have 4-5 levels on them?

Firstly, I don't allow evil PC's. I'd rather end a game entirely and walk away than DM for an evil party.

Second of all, I'm talking specifically about class levels. If you look through the monster manual index, there's plenty of variable level threats that can keep PC's in check.

Third of all, bounded accuracy for the win! I've almost TPK'd a 10th-level party with commoners :smallbiggrin:

[tieren]

If a party of four adventurers aren't able to conquer a small village and drive the populace into hiding/death by level 12-15, something is terribly wrong. The Kingdom may have retainers to be able to handle them, but PC's are not just special by that point, they are elite.

But how many people are in the kingdom? If a city has 50,000 residents and only 1 in 10,000 have levels, your only talking about 5 guys there that have any chance of hindering the party from running amok. And of those 5 guys how many are going to be of a level to really challenge an adventuring party?

I'd like to see enough leveled NPCs to deal with the party, and to present some challenges around town. The thieves guild should have some decent level rogues, a couple of the finer inns should have bards in them, and the temples should have some clerics that can provide services the party actually needs (heals or resurrections).

Whats the market for a potion that can heal 50 hp if 99.999 percent of the population only have 6hp? How many blacksmiths are going to make decent armor and weapons if no one is proficient with them?

[EggKookoo]

If a party of four adventurers aren't able to conquer a small village and drive the populace into hiding/death by level 12-15, something is terribly wrong. The Kingdom may have retainers to be able to handle them, but PC's are not just special by that point, they are elite.

I think you can kind of go two ways with this. Either the PCs are like the superheroes of their world, or they're adventuring cannon fodder. An example of the latter might be WoW. You make your Night Elf Hunter and jump into a world where you're immediately competing for quest items against two dozen other 1st level Night Elf Hunters. The adventurers actually outnumber the mundanes.

[EggKookoo]

Whats the market for a potion that can heal 50 hp if 99.999 percent of the population only have 6hp? How many blacksmiths are going to make decent armor and weapons if no one is proficient with them?

This still sounds like 3e thinking to me. I think the idea in 5e is that you shouldn't be thinking about magic items as commodities. Or at least that's the impression I get.

[tieren]

This still sounds like 3e thinking to me. I think the idea in 5e is that you shouldn't be thinking about magic items as commodities. Or at least that's the impression I get.

I was referring to an earlier poster that said consumables should be more available than permanent magic items. But even mundane things for adventurers, like armor and weapons would seem to be pretty rare to find if there are so few people with proficiencies.

I never played 3e so can't really comment on that. If PC's are ultra rare super-heroic type entities it seems that adventuring parties should be more difficult to form or we should be a lot more surprised when we happen to find one another.

[KorvinStarmast]

tieren

Just curious, for the posters that are discussing worlds where beings with levels are exceptionally rare (1 in 10,000) by the time the PC's are higher level (say 12-15) wouldn't you want town guards to at least have 4-5 levels on them? Seems otherwise you would be able to just decimate towns and villages on a whim.
Please read page 10 in the basic rules, Tiers of Play.
By level 12-15, the characters are dealing in adventures the influence kingdoms and continents. A town isn't in their challenge rating, nor should it be. It's a place to have a meal and sleep, to visit a particular person, get some info for a mission, or discover that a regional threat has its origin in a nearby well ...


I'd prefer to see a sergeant or something at level 8 leading a squad of 4-5 level 4 guardsmen at that point as a fairly common thing. Probably with a garrison chaplain cleric and an on call wizard available if something arcane threatens.
This kind of magic inflation and level inflation is what the 5e was intended to reverse.

I guess I just like a little more high fantasy with everything ramped up a bit more from the mundane, but wandering around with 150 hp when most of the population has 6hp just seems weird. No, it isn't weird. See tiers of play. Also, the note on bounded accuracy applies here.

I was actually just thinking this morning was that we should have levels for commoners so you could have a 9th level blacksmith or a 5th level baker Give them d4 hit dice and they could learn new recipes or something as they level up, but generally make the population a little tougher.
Why is the population necessarily tougher or not? They aren't out adventuring, they are simply living their lives as normal people.

The adventurers are exceptional, in one way or another. That's the basic conceit of this genre.

[Doug Lampert]

You can totally do it; WotC just never really bothered.
To have multiple different mundane classes that make sense, you need to have mundanes able to do things that "the guy at the gym" clearly couldn't do.

Otherwise either all mundane classes end up with the same abilities, or they end up LESS capable than "the guy at the gym".

You need to come up with actual mundane powers.

Joe over there can use his shield to block anything that needs line of effect and passes within his reach (spells, dragon-fire, whatever). [Hey, it's Captain America.]

Fred can run at 200'/round with no real trouble (seriously, there are plenty of real people who can run that fast in a sprint) and he can dodge anything. [As a reaction negate one attack, including spells that don't need an attack roll.]

Erica on the other hand can steal your spell focus out of your hand when you think she's standing on the other side of the room.

Richard can swing a sword four times a round (yawn), but we're NOT limiting these extra actions to just attacks, he gets four TURNS to your one, he also crafts and runs and walks four times as fast as any caster.

Jane has such an iron will that she makes all saves, yeah, ever one, every time, and this includes things where you wouldn't think will would help, because she's just that awesome.

Alice can make friends with ANYONE, that's why she's got a ancient red dragon and an ancient gold dragon cooperating to guard her back. They would kill each other, but that might upset Alice.

Morris can chop your head off with a single stroke of his great-axe; reflex save at DC 20 to avoid death, 100 HP damage on a made save.

Seriously, if you give people actual POWER, beyond the guy at the gym, then mundane classes aren't hard to make up. Third edition made ANIMAL COMPANIONS something you only got if you were a spell-caster (huh?!), in 3.0 it was actually a spell to attract one. If you make OBVIOUS mundane powers into spells then of course there isn't much left for actual mundane classes to do.

[tieren]

tieren

Please read page 10 in the basic rules, Tiers of Play.
By level 12-15, the characters are dealing in adventures the influence kingdoms and continents. A town isn't in their challenge rating, nor should it be. It's a place to have a meal and sleep, to visit a particular person, get some info for a mission, or discover that a regional threat has its origin in a nearby well ...


This kind of magic inflation and level inflation is what the 5e was intended to reverse.
No, it isn't weird. See tiers of play. Also, the note on bounded accuracy applies here.

Why is the population necessarily tougher or not? They aren't out adventuring, they are simply living their lives as normal people.

The adventurers are exceptional, in one way or another. That's the basic conceit of this genre.

I understand the tiers of play as described in the book, or at least I think I do, we haven't gotten there yet in our campaign. I guess the issue I have is while I can conceive of dealing with a threat to the kingdom or continent I can also see addressing that problem and not being 10-15 times mightier than the town's blacksmith that has been working with steel in a forge everyday for 10-15 years. But if he is level 0 and I am level 10 I can virtually sneeze and knock him out, or shrug off the damage as he beats his hammer into my head.

Maybe its balancing around going into monster keeps and fighting orc or goblin smiths and guardsmen, but something gnaws at me that humans shouldn't be that much weaker. If a group of 5-6 orc adventurers wandered into town and started massacring everyone I'd want them to have as much trouble as if my group tried to wipe out an entire orc town by alerting the guards and just taking all challengers.

[EggKookoo]

I was referring to an earlier poster that said consumables should be more available than permanent magic items. But even mundane things for adventurers, like armor and weapons would seem to be pretty rare to find if there are so few people with proficiencies.

Ah, gotcha. But why would mundane items (non-magical armor, swords, etc.) be particularly rare in a world with only few adventurers? There are still plenty of guards, soldiers, hunters, and the like among the mundane population to support some kind of market for these things.


I never played 3e so can't really comment on that. If PC's are ultra rare super-heroic type entities it seems that adventuring parties should be more difficult to form or we should be a lot more surprised when we happen to find one another.

Agreed. You'd have to build into your campaign backstory some kind of explanation or mechanism that brings your PCs together. I actually always do this in any game I GM. Before the players begin to think of their characters I let them know about their setting options and ask them to come up with at least a minimal PC history (I often get novels in return). Then I take what they came up with and see how I can fit it into my setting, and then craft the initial session in such a way that it makes sense that they encounter each other. Often they don't meet up all at once -- in my current game we played an entire session where one of the players basically wasn't involved until the end, when the rest of the group finally stumbled across her character.

[pwykersotz]

I think you can kind of go two ways with this. Either the PCs are like the superheroes of their world, or they're adventuring cannon fodder. An example of the latter might be WoW. You make your Night Elf Hunter and jump into a world where you're immediately competing for quest items against two dozen other 1st level Night Elf Hunters. The adventurers actually outnumber the mundanes.

Oh, you can. But like Korvin said, a village isn't in the purview of high level characters. After all, how many villages have Archmages (CR12) or someone of similar power? If your answer is all of them, then you do one of two things. Cut yourself off at the knees for certain storytelling tropes (bandit raids on the town) or you render the leveling system rather pointless with the upscaling. Neither of which are always problems, they just are for me.


But how many people are in the kingdom? If a city has 50,000 residents and only 1 in 10,000 have levels, your only talking about 5 guys there that have any chance of hindering the party from running amok. And of those 5 guys how many are going to be of a level to really challenge an adventuring party?

I'd like to see enough leveled NPCs to deal with the party, and to present some challenges around town. The thieves guild should have some decent level rogues, a couple of the finer inns should have bards in them, and the temples should have some clerics that can provide services the party actually needs (heals or resurrections).

Whats the market for a potion that can heal 50 hp if 99.999 percent of the population only have 6hp? How many blacksmiths are going to make decent armor and weapons if no one is proficient with them?

I think the divergence you and I have in our thinking is that NPC's need classes at all. It's okay to give them special abilities that are not class based, dependent on what they do. A blacksmith need not be level 8, but he might very well have a STR 18, A searing hot weapon drawn from his forge that deals a couple extra dice of fire damage on hit, and a special ability that forces a Con save versus being stunned when struck. And he can have 80hp (which is only a defensive CR of 1). Suddenly he's scary, but he's still not a fighter.

As for the healing potion (which seems to be fairly common given what we see in adventure modules), check out HP by CR in the DMG. They're pretty much always useful.

[HoarsHalberd]

In my homebrew I use the S. John Ross Medieval Demographics to determine population density and include in that calculation a roughly 0.0001%, or roughly 1 in every 10,000 people, with classes. I also limit classes by saying that knowledge is power. In medieval and ancient societies, the elite restricted power through access to training. I also say that very few people can be trained. Very few people having above the average (10's in all stats, plus & minus racial modifiers) stats so they don't even have the capability of learning a class (I require a minimum 13 in the primary stat of the class to even be considered for training).

All of this means that levelled people are exceptionally rare. People notice the PC's simply by them walking around and the PC's have to actively try to hide their nature if they don't want to be noticed.

0.0001 is 1/10,000. 0.0001% is 1/1,000,000.

[Ferrin33]

To have multiple different mundane classes that make sense, you need to have mundanes able to do things that "the guy at the gym" clearly couldn't do.

Otherwise either all mundane classes end up with the same abilities, or they end up LESS capable than "the guy at the gym".

You need to come up with actual mundane powers.

Joe over there can use his shield to block anything that needs line of effect and passes within his reach (spells, dragon-fire, whatever). [Hey, it's Captain America.]

Fred can run at 200'/round with no real trouble (seriously, there are plenty of real people who can run that fast in a sprint) and he can dodge anything. [As a reaction negate one attack, including spells that don't need an attack roll.]

Erica on the other hand can steal your spell focus out of your hand when you think she's standing on the other side of the room.

Richard can swing a sword four times a round (yawn), but we're NOT limiting these extra actions to just attacks, he gets four TURNS to your one, he also crafts and runs and walks four times as fast as any caster.

Jane has such an iron will that she makes all saves, yeah, ever one, every time, and this includes things where you wouldn't think will would help, because she's just that awesome.

Alice can make friends with ANYONE, that's why she's got a ancient red dragon and an ancient gold dragon cooperating to guard her back. They would kill each other, but that might upset Alice.

Morris can chop your head off with a single stroke of his great-axe; reflex save at DC 20 to avoid death, 100 HP damage on a made save.

Seriously, if you give people actual POWER, beyond the guy at the gym, then mundane classes aren't hard to make up. Third edition made ANIMAL COMPANIONS something you only got if you were a spell-caster (huh?!), in 3.0 it was actually a spell to attract one. If you make OBVIOUS mundane powers into spells then of course there isn't much left for actual mundane classes to do.

Most of those look supernatural, and wouldn't be enough to actually base a class around. Some examples of the supernatural;

Joe for example; blocks anything? Shields don't block everything, and there's actually a feat that does it fairly sensibly.

Fred can't run that fast when it's not a straight line and he's doing other things within that same time period.

Erica has illusions? If not, there's smoke and mirrors which requires setup, or there's hiding. How do you even make this an ability?

Richard... four actions per round, any kind you want? How do you even imagine this working and consider it mundane?

Jane. No. What kind of excuse would you even have to be able to make any and all saves 100% of the time?

Alice is really good at diplomacy, alright. So are the bard and rogue because of expertise. Do you want someone to be even better at it at the expense of other fields? Like most others an ability can't be to powerful as the class would need to be toned down in other areas. You end up as a one trick pony.

Morris is great at swinging his axe one specific way. Now how is that different from a fighter or barbarian swinging his axe? Just the fact that it's a single trick morris has?

All of these things are incredibly powerful abilities, but they're so focused on one thing that it would be hard to give them anything else. You need other abilities to complement them and have these as capstones. (Likely starting off with a weaker version that gets better.) Even then they're one trick ponies and don't have much space for other class features in order not to make them to strong.

[dropbear8mybaby]

0.0001 is 1/10,000. 0.0001% is 1/1,000,000.

The Typo King strikes again!

[tieren]

I think the divergence you and I have in our thinking is that NPC's need classes at all. It's okay to give them special abilities that are not class based, dependent on what they do. A blacksmith need not be level 8, but he might very well have a STR 18, A searing hot weapon drawn from his forge that deals a couple extra dice of fire damage on hit, and a special ability that forces a Con save versus being stunned when struck. And he can have 80hp (which is only a defensive CR of 1). Suddenly he's scary, but he's still not a fighter.


I do think you have the right of it. The NPC you describe seems very appropriate where my preconceived notion of a 6 hp 0 level NPC would not be. Is it really easier/better/more fun to custom describe each individual this way instead of using levels like we're used to?

What were the issues that arose in 3e with commoner levels?

To be clear I was not thinking of making them fighters, just more HD and maybe some industry specific boosts (like if cooking skill was a thing). Something so that a single ranger can't show up at the town meeting and murder everyone with a single volley.

[Sigreid]

Magic items are expensive and time consuming to make. I think most who could make them would only do it for themselves and their closest friends and family. Of course this goes out the window with the rare idea if you implement the arrificer.

[Xetheral]

The idea that magic items are rare is also at odds with published adventures - not Monty Haul but only slightly less than 3e. It's like designers didn't really want to deal with item creation rules so said "just fudge it, items are rare."

That was the impression I got too. It doesn't help that they chose High-Magic FR as the default setting. I'm still waiting to hear the official explanation for why all the magic items disappeared.


I was actually just thinking this morning was that we should have levels for commoners so you could have a 9th level blacksmith or a 5th level baker Give them d4 hit dice and they could learn new recipes or something as they level up, but generally make the population a little tougher.

I chose to do this back in 3.5. In my custom setting, approximately 1-4 levels in an NPC class was an apprentice-level craftsman, journeyman was 5-8, and a master was 9-12. (I forget the exact methodology, but I derived the numbers from the possible skill bonuses and my desire to have enough skilled NPCS for the PCs to have an interest in interacting with the local economy.) So, the handful of most-prominent citizens in a decent-sized village were around level 10. I still haven't worked out exactly how I'm going to handle NPC distribution in 5e. I'm winging it for now as I slowly adapt my setting.


Oh, you can. But like Korvin said, a village isn't in the purview of high level characters. After all, how many villages have Archmages (CR12) or someone of similar power? If your answer is all of them, then you do one of two things. Cut yourself off at the knees for certain storytelling tropes (bandit raids on the town) or you render the leveling system rather pointless with the upscaling. Neither of which are always problems, they just are for me.

5e with its bounded accuracy makes it a LOT easier to have a local archmage in town without making the town unassailable.


I think the divergence you and I have in our thinking is that NPC's need classes at all. It's okay to give them special abilities that are not class based, dependent on what they do. A blacksmith need not be level 8, but he might very well have a STR 18, A searing hot weapon drawn from his forge that deals a couple extra dice of fire damage on hit, and a special ability that forces a Con save versus being stunned when struck. And he can have 80hp (which is only a defensive CR of 1). Suddenly he's scary, but he's still not a fighter.

Out of curiosity, what do you do to the Blacksmith's special abilities if the PCs move into town and train him as a fighter? Does he get to keep his massive HP, or does it drop to 10+con? And what do you do if one of the PCs is the Blacksmith's twin brother (and himself a former Blacksmith)? If they feud and get into a fight, how do you fluff the Blacksmith's massive advantage in HP?

Personally I prefer the elegance of a unified model for PCs and NPCs. I also hate it as a PC when a humanoid NPC "breaks" the modeling rules I have to follow--all of a sudden the campaign world feels dreadfully artificial. That being said, I understand the desire for the greater flexibility of having separate systems for PCs and NPCs. I'm just glad they brought back the option to model NPCs using PC rules. The inability to do so in 4e, more than anything else, drove me away from the system.

[EggKookoo]

5e with its bounded accuracy makes it a LOT easier to have a local archmage in town without making the town unassailable.

Wouldn't that also solve the problem of too-powerful PCs in a town of mundane NPCs?

[Ralanr]

Magic items are expensive and time consuming to make. I think most who could make them would only do it for themselves and their closest friends and family. Of course this goes out the window with the rare idea if you implement the arrificer.

Not necessarily. So long as it's not permanent magic items then I don't see a problem.

[Shining Wrath]

Yeah, when creating a setting, you have to think about how many people in the world have class levels, how many are over 3rd level (where AT and EK and shadow monk develop magic), etc.

I prefer settings where only 1 in 100 or so have class levels at all, and only a handful of them have multiple levels. It's fair to describe magic as 'rare' in such settings, even if it doesn't seem that way to the PCs (who live extraordinary lives).

^This is a good start.

Add to that the idea that being able to manipulate the Weave in some fashion is not the same thing as binding the Weave to an object. A comparison might be between the number of people who can sing (almost everyone) and the number who can compose simple tunes (a smaller number) and the number who can compose for full orchestra with 6 vocal parts in the Chorus (much less than 1%). That's roughly the same as "Can do magic", "Can create simple magic like potions or scrolls", and "Can create +3 swords".

Artifacts would be Beethoven's 9th.

[EggKookoo]

Personally I prefer the elegance of a unified model for PCs and NPCs. I also hate it as a PC when a humanoid NPC "breaks" the modeling rules I have to follow--all of a sudden the campaign world feels dreadfully artificial.

I've always viewed the rules as a nominally artificial abstraction between the players and the characters, so having different rules for PCs and NPCs doesn't bother me in the least. I mean, in a game with character levels, hit points, armor class, saving throws, and a myriad of other "gamey" constructs -- pretty much all of which are invisible to characters but critical to players -- the idea that NPCs use a kind of simplified system is a non-issue for me.

[Shining Wrath]

That was the impression I got too. It doesn't help that they chose High-Magic FR as the default setting. I'm still waiting to hear the official explanation for why all the magic items disappeared.



I chose to do this back in 3.5. In my custom setting, approximately 1-4 levels in an NPC class was an apprentice-level craftsman, journeyman was 5-8, and a master was 9-12. (I forget the exact methodology, but I derived the numbers from the possible skill bonuses and my desire to have enough skilled NPCS for the PCs to have an interest in interacting with the local economy.) So, the handful of most-prominent citizens in a decent-sized village were around level 10. I still haven't worked out exactly how I'm going to handle NPC distribution in 5e. I'm winging it for now as I slowly adapt my setting.



5e with its bounded accuracy makes it a LOT easier to have a local archmage in town without making the town unassailable.



Out of curiosity, what do you do to the Blacksmith's special abilities if the PCs move into town and train him as a fighter? Does he get to keep his massive HP, or does it drop to 10+con? And what do you do if one of the PCs is the Blacksmith's twin brother (and himself a former Blacksmith)? If they feud and get into a fight, how do you fluff the Blacksmith's massive advantage in HP?

Personally I prefer the elegance of a unified model for PCs and NPCs. I also hate it as a PC when a humanoid NPC "breaks" the modeling rules I have to follow--all of a sudden the campaign world feels dreadfully artificial. That being said, I understand the desire for the greater flexibility of having separate systems for PCs and NPCs. I'm just glad they brought back the option to model NPCs using PC rules. The inability to do so in 4e, more than anything else, drove me away from the system.

I believe in the idea of having levels in Commoner. For example, if you've got the best glassblower in the country in front of you, the gal has Proficiency of 6 in Glassblowing. It's the result of years of practice and training; she has gotten massive amounts of XP for things like "craft delicate vase". She's a level 17 Commoner, proficient in no weapons whatsoever, no armor, Spellcasting is definitely not a class ability. But man oh man can she make glass dance.

Take her, train her as a Rogue, she's now Commoner 17 / Rogue 1. But it will take a surprising amount of training for her to get that first Rogue level, because she's going to view every problem through those years of glassblowing experience- in fact, it will take (XP required to go from 17 to 18) amount of training.

[EggKookoo]

Take her, train her as a Rogue, she's now Commoner 17 / Rogue 1. But it will take a surprising amount of training for her to get that first Rogue level, because she's going to view every problem through those years of glassblowing experience- in fact, it will take (XP required to go from 17 to 18) amount of training.

Further, consider ability score requirements. Does she have a high enough DEX to multiclass to Rogue?

[Xetheral]

Wouldn't that also solve the problem of too-powerful PCs in a town of mundane NPCs?

Indeed. On the other hand, I'm more worried about skill check results when it comes to commoner-type NPCs, just because they don't end up in combat very often. I'm still trying various options for fiddling with the skill system so that it can easily represent a wide range of NPC skill masteries without requiring the extremely high HP that would come with a sufficiently-high proficiency bonus to make the NPCs' skills of value to the player.


I've always viewed the rules as a nominally artificial abstraction between the players and the characters, so having different rules for PCs and NPCs doesn't bother me in the least. I mean, in a game with character levels, hit points, armor class, saving throws, and a myriad of other "gamey" constructs -- pretty much all of which are invisible to characters but critical to players -- the idea that NPCs use a kind of simplified system is a non-issue for me.

Frankly, even in 3.5 I often cut-corners with NPCs, just throwing together what looked like rather than build them according to the system. On the other hand, after working with the system for so long I'm confident that 9 out of 10 of my NPCs I could find a legal way to build them that replicated the exact final stats I chose. The 1 out of 10 exception would probably be a skill bonus that I put too high compared to their hit points. It's philosophically important to me that they use the same model, not that I then follow that model exactly. Does that make any sense?


I believe in the idea of having levels in Commoner. For example, if you've got the best glassblower in the country in front of you, the gal has Proficiency of 6 in Glassblowing. It's the result of years of practice and training; she has gotten massive amounts of XP for things like "craft delicate vase". She's a level 17 Commoner, proficient in no weapons whatsoever, no armor, Spellcasting is definitely not a class ability. But man oh man can she make glass dance.

Take her, train her as a Rogue, she's now Commoner 17 / Rogue 1. But it will take a surprising amount of training for her to get that first Rogue level, because she's going to view every problem through those years of glassblowing experience- in fact, it will take (XP required to go from 17 to 18) amount of training.

At some point I may homebrew a Commoner and/or Expert class so that I have standard building-blocks for assembling NPCs. As for gaining PC class levels, in 3.5 I permitted new levels to be taken on top of the existing levels, as you describe, but I also permitted a PC class level to overwrite an NPC class level, in which case the experience required was based solely on the number of PC levels in the build. This was all theory-work, however, because I never got around to running a campaign that had the PCs starting with NPC classes.

[Sigreid]

Not necessarily. So long as it's not permanent magic items then I don't see a problem.

I was assuming permanent. Expendable items don't make a high magic setting to me. I do think the low magic item thing is overblown. I think what they did was make it possible to run a campaign without them. Previous editions you eventually hit a point where you have magic items or you are doomed.

[Morty]

To have multiple different mundane classes that make sense, you need to have mundanes able to do things that "the guy at the gym" clearly couldn't do.

Otherwise either all mundane classes end up with the same abilities, or they end up LESS capable than "the guy at the gym".


Yes, but it's not just that. Perfectly normal and realistic abilities can be expressed through unique abilities too, so long as it's not something that everyone can do. In fact, it's more interesting than just piling up small and big numbers.

I'm purposefully not using the words "magical", "supernatural" or "mundane" here, because none of them actually means anything in a world like D&D's.

[Xetheral]

Previous editions you eventually hit a point where you have magic items or you are doomed.

That's said a lot, but I think it's overblown. It's easy to change DR/magic to DR/special material, and to adjust the overall difficulty for the PC's actual abilities. It's only a problem if you insist on building encounters "by the book" (which, particularly in 3.5, was almost an exercise in futility anyway).

[Shining Wrath]

Further, consider ability score requirements. Does she have a high enough DEX to multiclass to Rogue?

I assumed the key ability for the glassblower skill was Dexterity, but if you want to argue Intelligence or Wisdom then change her new class accordingly.

[pwykersotz]

Out of curiosity, what do you do to the Blacksmith's special abilities if the PCs move into town and train him as a fighter? Does he get to keep his massive HP, or does it drop to 10+con? And what do you do if one of the PCs is the Blacksmith's twin brother (and himself a former Blacksmith)? If they feud and get into a fight, how do you fluff the Blacksmith's massive advantage in HP?

For the fighter training, it depends. If for some reason it's critically important that the NPC have an actual PC class and take that level of fighter, they can earn it after a time and I up the CR accordingly based on their new abilities of attack/defense. So far I haven't had this come up. If they just need a particular move or skill, that's also easy, they learn it in time and I adjust the CR again, only with fewer variables having changed. Most of the time though, since NPC growth happens offscreen, they just go from Commoner to Guard to Veteran and use the statblocks accordingly.

If there's a thematic need to equate a PC and particular NPC, then that might be an appropriate time to give out class levels. But in general I haven't found it necessary. The default justification I would give is they trained in different skillsets after a certain point. But if the issue were to be forced (as in they started off identical in everything, then one brother went on adventures and gained two levels), I would concede that the easy way would be to assign a single class level and be done.

That said, I think I'm brutally off-topic now so I'll leave this off here unless I can bring it back around to magic casting proliferation vs magic item proliferation.

[Ralanr]

I was assuming permanent. Expendable items don't make a high magic setting to me. I do think the low magic item thing is overblown. I think what they did was make it possible to run a campaign without them. Previous editions you eventually hit a point where you have magic items or you are doomed.

I never saw (I also never played the class or 3.5 so I'm really ignorant) the artificer as creating permanent items. Rather I assumed they were things that needed retunning everyday.

[tieren]

Further, consider ability score requirements. Does she have a high enough DEX to multiclass to Rogue?

I bet she'd be pretty good with her hands.

[Knaight]

Coming back to the idea of dissonance - there's no reason to assume that the ability to cast spells and the ability to make magic items are anywhere near equally prevalent. A magic system where spell casters are one in a million rarities and magic item crafting is a significant portion of the artisan classes' work is entirely viable. So is a magic system where casting spells isn't a big deal, but making anything permanent represents the sort of mastery that comes up once every generation or so.

[EggKookoo]

Frankly, even in 3.5 I often cut-corners with NPCs, just throwing together what looked like rather than build them according to the system. On the other hand, after working with the system for so long I'm confident that 9 out of 10 of my NPCs I could find a legal way to build them that replicated the exact final stats I chose. The 1 out of 10 exception would probably be a skill bonus that I put too high compared to their hit points. It's philosophically important to me that they use the same model, not that I then follow that model exactly. Does that make any sense?

Certainly, and I'm not trying to argue you into a different position.

I guess I can see the NPC model as a simplified version of the PC model. So to my mind they're the same model, it's just that the PC version gets into the nitty gritty stuff like levels and classes and so forth.


I bet she'd be pretty good with her hands.

Right, I was just bringing it up as a concept. If I went with NPC classes and wanted to multiclass into a PC class, I would take into consideration the PC class's ability requirements, which might be a limiting factor.

[SharkForce]

That's said a lot, but I think it's overblown. It's easy to change DR/magic to DR/special material, and to adjust the overall difficulty for the PC's actual abilities. It's only a problem if you insist on building encounters "by the book" (which, particularly in 3.5, was almost an exercise in futility anyway).

the problem wasn't as much in DR (though that didn't help), as it was in the numbers you were throwing around.

things could get to the point where if you don't have magic items, you probably can't hit a monster of appropriate CR, and the monster has only a miniscule chance of missing you.

[Sigreid]

That's said a lot, but I think it's overblown. It's easy to change DR/magic to DR/special material, and to adjust the overall difficulty for the PC's actual abilities. It's only a problem if you insist on building encounters "by the book" (which, particularly in 3.5, was almost an exercise in futility anyway).

Well, when talking in generalities with strangers on the Internet the book is our only common footing.

[KorvinStarmast]

not being 10-15 times mightier than the town's blacksmith that has been working with steel in a forge everyday for 10-15 years.
You can be strong but not be the best fighter around. Strength is not the be all of fighting, but it's part of it with all other factors thrown in.

But if he is level 0 and I am level 10 I can virtually sneeze and knock him out, or shrug off the damage as he beats his hammer into my head. With bounded accuracy, no you can't. However, since you are a fighter, at level 10, you'd be to him like Mike Tyson to me: one blow and he's out. That's an accurate reflection of someone who is VERY good at fighting and just some guy.


If a group of 5-6 orc adventurers wandered into town and started massacring everyone
Bounded accuracy takes care of that.
If you are a DM, the power of the characters in a world where MAGIC exists, at levels where 7th and 6th level spells actually exist, is like using a battery of 105mm howitzers to take out a town. The town will be taken out, the firepower differential is that great.
But there are still RL consequences, you just decide how you wish to apply them, as a DM.

Please note: D&D comes originally from Chainmail which was a war game. Mages were in fact a form or artillery at the game table when it was battles between armies of miniatures.

[Knaight]

You can be strong but not be the best fighter around. Strength is not the be all of fighting, but it's part of it with all other factors thrown in.

Honestly, it's a comparatively minor part. Strength is an advantage that you can leverage over people who are weaker than you, and is pretty much analogous to speed, reach, and other things. Absolutely none of these are worth anywhere near as much as skill and experience. Strong people with little experience frequently still have a flinching instinct, which can be easily exploited just by being aggressive. They often make sloppy movements that leave themselves open, which can be easily exploited by a half decent feint. Even if their reflexes in other aspects are good, they're often slow and clumsy due to not being used to the motions involved.

Basically, in armed combat between a skilled veteran who's not too impressive physically (maybe they're getting older, maybe they're a bit rusty and over the hill) and an untrained novice who is built like a statue of a Greek god, my money is on the veteran just about every time.

[KorvinStarmast]

Basically, in armed combat between a skilled veteran who's not too impressive physically (maybe they're getting older, maybe they're a bit rusty and over the hill) and an untrained novice who is built like a statue of a Greek god, my money is on the veteran just about every time. We appear to be in violent agreement.

[iTreeby]

the dmg has rules for making magic items, in addition to having to be a spellcaster with the appropriate spells you also have to have the formula (which in a campaign where magic items are common will cost you twice as much as the item) and spend 25 gold each day to make the item an uncommon item takes 20 days a rare one takes 200. you can't even buy a rare formula so that means the formula for a ring of spell storing is treated as very rare magic item which means an eleventh level character has to find it as treasure and decide to craft it, or have it crafted by someone level 6. now I can believe a level six character would spend 200 days and 5k gold making an item and would then sell it back to the level eleven character for at least 10,800 gold so he can make his own ring of spell storing at cost while maintaining a wealthy lifestyle but that still doesn't explain how any of them get into a shop, if you follow the rules looking for a buyer the most you will get out of them for a rare item is 7500 which works out to a profit of 1700
in order to break even selling rings of of spell storing vrs how much you could sell the schematic for you need to make and sell 30 of the damn things to shady collectors no questions asked. this should take you around 16 and1/2 years

who has the time to craft magic items for sale?

[Daishain]

the dmg has rules for making magic items, in addition to having to be a spellcaster with the appropriate spells you also have to have the formula (which in a campaign where magic items are common will cost you twice as much as the item) and spend 25 gold each day to make the item an uncommon item takes 20 days a rare one takes 200. you can't even buy a rare formula so that means the formula for a ring of spell storing is treated as very rare magic item which means an eleventh level character has to find it as treasure and decide to craft it, or have it crafted by someone level 6. now I can believe a level six character would spend 200 days and 5k gold making an item and would then sell it back to the level eleven character for at least 10,800 gold so he can make his own ring of spell storing at cost while maintaining a wealthy lifestyle but that still doesn't explain how any of them get into a shop, if you follow the rules looking for a buyer the most you will get out of them for a rare item is 7500 which works out to a profit of 1700
in order to break even selling rings of of spell storing vrs how much you could sell the schematic for you need to make and sell 30 of the damn things to shady collectors no questions asked. this should take you around 16 and1/2 years

who has the time to craft magic items for sale?
First rule of thumb when it comes to surviving the D&D crafting and economic rules with your sanity intact: Ignore everything ever written by WoTC about crafting and economics in the D&D world. Seriously, its messed up.

[Shining Wrath]

We appear to be in violent agreement.

Ever try a martial art? Black belt beats white belt, every time.

6'2" 180 pound black belt usually (not always) beats 5'2" 120 pound black belt. Reach matters more than quickness, and while quick guys get tired, long arms don't get shorter.

Two guys the same size where one is significantly stronger? Bet on the strong guy.

[Stan]

First rule of thumb when it comes to surviving the D&D crafting and economic rules with your sanity intact: Ignore everything ever written by WoTC about crafting and economics in the D&D world. Seriously, its messed up.

Yes.
Well maybe not everything but the societal implications of their rules never seem to have been thought through. Well, maybe everything.
And their pricing system in 5e is lazy compared to 3e/4e, though still more detailed than 1e/2e.

[Vogonjeltz]

I find itweird that in 5e, magic users are very common. there is no 1 class that lacks the use of magic powers...
yet the absence of magical items is popular.
I understand the mechanic concept behind it, but thematically it's pretty weird that even a common rogue can cast spells, yet no magical items to be found easily

It's the difference between being able to do something oneself and being able to manufacture a product that does something. Plus it requires a recipe.

Almost everyone can do math themselves.

No single human can completely fabricate, without blueprints, a modern computer or graphing calculator to do math.


So yeah, there could be a ton of mages who can cast shield, but nobody qualified to make a permanent magic item of shield.

[Knaight]

Ever try a martial art? Black belt beats white belt, every time.

6'2" 180 pound black belt usually (not always) beats 5'2" 120 pound black belt. Reach matters more than quickness, and while quick guys get tired, long arms don't get shorter.

Two guys the same size where one is significantly stronger? Bet on the strong guy.

Weapons mitigate this significantly. All things equal I'd generally favor the larger person in most circumstances, but when you just need to land one clean shot the smaller one is in a much better position. Weapons also mitigate numbers to some degree - unarmed a 1 on 4 is ugly even if the one person is far better. Armed it's still far from ideal, but if the people are new enough to still have an exploitable flinch instinct odds start favoring the one person.

[VoxRationis]

Just curious, for the posters that are discussing worlds where beings with levels are exceptionally rare (1 in 10,000) by the time the PC's are higher level (say 12-15) wouldn't you want town guards to at least have 4-5 levels on them? Seems otherwise you would be able to just decimate towns and villages on a whim.

I'd prefer to see a sergeant or something at level 8 leading a squad of 4-5 level 4 guardsmen at that point as a fairly common thing. Probably with a garrison chaplain cleric and an on call wizard available if something arcane threatens. Maybe even make municipal community service a requirement of the kingdom wizard school for young casters.

I guess I just like a little more high fantasy with everything ramped up a bit more from the mundane, but wandering around with 150 hp when most of the population has 6hp just seems weird.

I was actually just thinking this morning was that we should have levels for commoners so you could have a 9th level blacksmith or a 5th level baker Give them d4 hit dice and they could learn new recipes or something as they level up, but generally make the population a little tougher.

I'm with you on this one, tieren. Settings in which individuals powerful enough to be noticeable to PCs of any level are especially rare don't make sense, because of two reasons noticed within gameplay:
1: Fallen PCs will almost always find a replacement in relatively short order, certainly more quickly than would make sense to find by coincidence the subset of the 1-in-100000 subset who are willing and able to take up the adventuring life on short notice;
2: PCs are regularly fighting threats of their caliber, even when they are not seeking out those threats and those threats have no particular reason to steer towards the PCs (usually, in fact, most enemies would probably move away from the PCs if given advance notice, since an encounter with them would in most cases end badly); if these threats existed before the PCs attained the levels appropriate to fighting them, in a reasonable fashion of consistent world-building, and PC-level power is rare, the entire region around which the threats are noticed should be dominated or depopulated by them, since they would have rode roughshod over the defenseless populace.

[dropbear8mybaby]

1: Fallen PCs will almost always find a replacement in relatively short order, certainly more quickly than would make sense to find by coincidence the subset of the 1-in-100000 subset who are willing and able to take up the adventuring life on short notice;
Bringing realism into an argument about the demographics of a fantasy milieu. Umm. OK.


2: PCs are regularly fighting threats of their caliber...
I'd like to draw your attention to Appendix B, page 342 of the MM.

[VoxRationis]

Bringing realism into an argument about the demographics of a fantasy milieu. Umm. OK.

This isn't about realism (and even if it were, it wouldn't be grounds for exclusion from this discussion), it's about logical consequences and self-consistency. You can't say that an element of a setting is rare and then have it crop up continually without shattering suspension of disbelief.

I'd like to draw your attention to Appendix B, page 342 of the MM.
Unfortunately, I only have access to the Player's Handbook and DM's Guide. Page references to the MM are going to be beyond me, though I might be familiar with the concept you're referring to.

[dropbear8mybaby]

This isn't about realism (and even if it were, it wouldn't be grounds for exclusion from this discussion), it's about logical consequences and self-consistency. You can't say that an element of a setting is rare and then have it crop up continually without shattering suspension of disbelief.

What is inconsistent? Magical items are are due to internal setting consistencies. In a setting where magical items and the people who make them are both rare, what is inconsistent about that? In fact, it seems more inconsistent to say that magical items are rare and the people who make them aren't simply because there needs to be a challenge for the PC's to prevent them from murderhoboing and taking over the multiverse.

[Doug Lampert]

Most of those look supernatural, and wouldn't be enough to actually base a class around. Some examples of the supernatural;

Congratulations on demonstrating my point that there are people who won't allow anything better than the guy at the gym.


Joe for example; blocks anything? Shields don't block everything, and there's actually a feat that does it fairly sensibly.
Why don't shield block anything? It's a physical object and I specified that the things it blocks are things that need line of effect.

This is just saying that a big object can block line of effect and you say "magic"!

Thank you again for demonstrating my point.


Fred can't run that fast when it's not a straight line and he's doing other things within that same time period.
Actually he can move about that fast around corners, and I never said he could do anything else.

Here you are taking something the guy at the gym can ACTUALLY DO, IN OUR WORLD, and saying "magic"!


Erica has illusions? If not, there's smoke and mirrors which requires setup, or there's hiding. How do you even make this an ability?
Nope, she has misdirection and does something to break LOS. No magic required.


Richard... four actions per round, any kind you want? How do you even imagine this working and consider it mundane?

Because turns and limits on what you can do in them are a game abstraction! Acting more quickly and efficiently is a real thing.


Jane. No. What kind of excuse would you even have to be able to make any and all saves 100% of the time?

Seriously? (A) I gave the reason and (B) the things that CAUSE saves are "magic" or made up, this means how hard it is to make one is also made up and arbitrary.


Alice is really good at diplomacy, alright. So are the bard and rogue because of expertise. Do you want someone to be even better at it at the expense of other fields? Like most others an ability can't be to powerful as the class would need to be toned down in other areas. You end up as a one trick pony.

So mundanes can't be good because it forces them to be one trick ponies, but casters can throw dominate + lots of other spells?


Morris is great at swinging his axe one specific way. Now how is that different from a fighter or barbarian swinging his axe? Just the fact that it's a single trick morris has?

He's better in that he can one shot ANYTHING on a good roll, something only casters are usually allowed to do. And it's YOUR DELUSION that one good power for a mundane means one trick pony!


All of these things are incredibly powerful abilities, but they're so focused on one thing that it would be hard to give them anything else. You need other abilities to complement them and have these as capstones. (Likely starting off with a weaker version that gets better.) Even then they're one trick ponies and don't have much space for other class features in order not to make them to strong.
Once you've established that mundane abilities CAN be strong (done, you claim too strong), you can then worry about balance. But the first thing is to establish that mundane abilities CAN be strong, and I note that you admit that two of the strongest I've listed are purely mundane and then claim they are too strong to build a class around, this is absurd, especially since both obviously can scale fairly trivially (heck, one is just numbers, you can scale numbers).

[RazDelacroix]

In the head-canon of my own little multiverse/campaign setting, I am having it that magic itself is not what is uncommon; but it is the exceptionally SKILLED with it that are.

And to help display that, I hug the Monster Manual and then flip to page 342 where the Nonplayer Character stat blocks reside. Note that while many of them may share some spellcasting slots with our dear PC's, they for the most part lack the core essentials that define our rolled-up Heroes.

Look at the first entry there if you will. The humble Acolyte. Three level 1 spell-slots, three cantrips, a club, a 14 Wisdom, knows one language, CR 1/4 and worth 50 xp. Oh, and possesses on average 9 hit points (from a pool of 2d8 Hit Dice).

Compare that to a Level one Cleric. A pair of level one spell-slots, a couple of cantrips, and even only one Hit Die. But... they possess a Divine Domain as well. And they only get more power as they go out into the world and go, 'Behold the message of my God, BURN!'

I like to even make this distinction when we compare such folk as the Archmage that was presented in the MM, to a Wizard of comparable level. Does the Wizard have as many spellslots? Probably not. But the Wizard took on an arcane tradition that the Archmage passed off as an unnecessary study and yet the Wizard is stronger for it.

If one of my players ever complains that Fighters are common, I will pelt them with a d10 before I explain that warriors are common. Thugs are common. Town guards are well-trained/equipped common. FIGHTERS are freakin' HEROES.

And when it comes to item creations, I like to think that the Trinkets presented in the PHB are the more commonly created magical items compared to most of the magical items found in the DMG.

[dropbear8mybaby]

...stuff...

This forum needs an upvote button.

[Morcleon]

Honestly, I just throw out the "magic items are rare" thing in my 5e games. It makes the world less interesting if it's just medieval but with spots of (mostly PC and villain) magic here or there. A metropolis doesn't just have walls and bigger buildings. A metropolis practically glows with the amount of magic within. Magically powered trains run throughout the city, and the streets are lit at night with glowing orbs floating above. Magic items make the world feel magical.

[Pex]

Magic items are only as rare or common as you want them to be. Nothing about 5E says you must, must have a game with little to no magic items. The limitations it has in compared to previous editions is plus numbers to weapons and armor remain low and the more potent items require attunement where you can only have three attuned items at a time. The game Does Not Forbid magic items. The game Does Not Fall Apart when magic items exist and are plenty. You are not playing the game wrong for having them.

The math behind the game is such that a character doesn't absolutely need a particular kind or number of magic items to function at all levels. That lack of need is NOT EQUAL to meaning no magic items what so ever. Some DMs are just jaded over previous editions, especially 3E where players could purchase items, that they are having a knee-jerk reaction to ban magic items altogether. That is on them, NOT 5E. I am purposely bolding and underlining because it is precisely the loud voices of those DMs that cause threads like this of people thinking magic items might as well not exist.

[Ralanr]

In the head-canon of my own little multiverse/campaign setting, I am having it that magic itself is not what is uncommon; but it is the exceptionally SKILLED with it that are.

And to help display that, I hug the Monster Manual and then flip to page 342 where the Nonplayer Character stat blocks reside. Note that while many of them may share some spellcasting slots with our dear PC's, they for the most part lack the core essentials that define our rolled-up Heroes.

Look at the first entry there if you will. The humble Acolyte. Three level 1 spell-slots, three cantrips, a club, a 14 Wisdom, knows one language, CR 1/4 and worth 50 xp. Oh, and possesses on average 9 hit points (from a pool of 2d8 Hit Dice).

Compare that to a Level one Cleric. A pair of level one spell-slots, a couple of cantrips, and even only one Hit Die. But... they possess a Divine Domain as well. And they only get more power as they go out into the world and go, 'Behold the message of my God, BURN!'

I like to even make this distinction when we compare such folk as the Archmage that was presented in the MM, to a Wizard of comparable level. Does the Wizard have as many spellslots? Probably not. But the Wizard took on an arcane tradition that the Archmage passed off as an unnecessary study and yet the Wizard is stronger for it.

If one of my players ever complains that Fighters are common, I will pelt them with a d10 before I explain that warriors are common. Thugs are common. Town guards are well-trained/equipped common. FIGHTERS are freakin' HEROES.

And when it comes to item creations, I like to think that the Trinkets presented in the PHB are the more commonly created magical items compared to most of the magical items found in the DMG.


This forum needs an upvote button.

Yes. Yes it does.

[Xetheral]

the problem wasn't as much in DR (though that didn't help), as it was in the numbers you were throwing around.

things could get to the point where if you don't have magic items, you probably can't hit a monster of appropriate CR, and the monster has only a miniscule chance of missing you.

And it's easy enough to just ignore CR and eyeball the level of challenge you want. Over the years how many threads in the 3.5 forum were devoted to the hopelessly-unreliable encounter-building formula? If that system is already nonfunctional it doesn't make things any worse to abandon it when you want to change the assumptions regarding item distribution.


Well, when talking in generalities with strangers on the Internet the book is our only common footing.

While I agree in principle, I don't think it applies here. Choosing to eyeball encounter difficulty rather than stick to the DMG formula isn't in any way a houserule, let alone one that removes the common ground on which the discussion is based.

[dropbear8mybaby]

It makes the world less interesting if it's just medieval but with spots of (mostly PC and villain) magic here or there.

I prefer the PC's to be the focus rather than the setting or the things they're wearing. It's one of the major reasons why I love 5e so much.

[Xetheral]

Honestly, I just throw out the "magic items are rare" thing in my 5e games. It makes the world less interesting if it's just medieval but with spots of (mostly PC and villain) magic here or there. A metropolis doesn't just have walls and bigger buildings. A metropolis practically glows with the amount of magic within. Magically powered trains run throughout the city, and the streets are lit at night with glowing orbs floating above. Magic items make the world feel magical.

How do you handle magic item pricing? Do you follow the prices in the DMG or do you have your own system?

[VoxRationis]

What is inconsistent? Magical items are are due to internal setting consistencies. In a setting where magical items and the people who make them are both rare, what is inconsistent about that? In fact, it seems more inconsistent to say that magical items are rare and the people who make them aren't simply because there needs to be a challenge for the PC's to prevent them from murderhoboing and taking over the multiverse.

And now you're deliberately misinterpreting my point. Wonderful.
I was speaking in response to comments about the relative frequencies of NPCs of sufficient power and level to be a challenge to mid-level PCs. The frequency of magic item appearance is not part of what I was saying.
Furthermore, you miss the point that whatever the DM says about the frequency of mid- to high-level (and whether they have actual class levels or are stat blocks from the MM isn't really relevant, because they still have spells and piles of hitpoints and whatnot, and are explicitly of power comparable to certain points in a PC's career) NPCs, the actual rate of appearance in-game will make them fairly common, unless the game is one about putting down peasant revolts. The inconsistency which you claim not to see is that between what is said and what appears, not between average NPC level and the frequency of magical items.

[Ferrin33]

Congratulations on demonstrating my point that there are people who won't allow anything better than the guy at the gym.

...

Once you've established that mundane abilities CAN be strong (done, you claim too strong), you can then worry about balance. But the first thing is to establish that mundane abilities CAN be strong, and I note that you admit that two of the strongest I've listed are purely mundane and then claim they are too strong to build a class around, this is absurd, especially since both obviously can scale fairly trivially (heck, one is just numbers, you can scale numbers).

Joe - Shield Master feat
Fred - Monk Speed
Erica - Rogue Cunning Action helps there a lot
Richard - Fighter attacks
Jane - Monk Diamond Soul
Alice - Anyone with Expertise
Morris - He's literally just swinging his axe better than others, why do you need this ability to fulfill that fantasy? Ok, you want a character not reliant on the extra attacks with a single blow, there's superiority dice for that as fighter, or barbarian when he crits. It'd be neat to have a similar ability as an option for a martial class that he can choose, but you've given no chassis to put it on, or attempt to balance it at all. (also; doesn't make sense it would work on anything at all)

You may say "But they're not as good!", which may just mean you want to be able to focus on one thing, but that's called being a one-trick pony. Of course, in Richard's case it's a bit different, but luckily for you we'll be getting the mystic who can achieve that a bit more accurately with celerity. Many of the things you listed are already possible, just toned down a bit. Do you consider any of those abilities underpowered? Or do you dislike the rest of the class attached to those abilities?

[Morty]

This thread demonstrates a long-standing problem with D&D, namely that it could never handle the power it gives to its PCs. There's a gulf between how the game treats characters of a given level, and what they can actually do. As usual, it hits non-magical characters harder, since the game doesn't really have a concept for how to describe them beyond "really good with a weapon" or "really clever and skilled". But their abilities, pathetic as they may be, still go way past that by measure of pure numbers. 5e flattens the power curve, of course, but it's still there and can't be done away with without making some changes to the system's assumptions, which no one at WotC has ever been willing to do.

As far as spells go, it certainly is true that we shouldn't confuse "magical" with "extraordinary". Magic isn't extraordinary. In a world like D&D's, a first-level wizard shouldn't have an inherently higher status than any other qualified specialist. A 10th level wizard is extraordinary. So is a 10th level fighter, or ranger. Or a scholar. Or craftsman. It's all different sorts of power and skill. D&D has simply always favoured only one sort of power and ignored the rest.

[Morcleon]

How do you handle magic item pricing? Do you follow the prices in the DMG or do you have your own system?

The Sane Magic Item Pricing on the homebrew section, with a few modifications here or there.

[pwykersotz]

Magic items are only as rare or common as you want them to be. Nothing about 5E says you must, must have a game with little to no magic items. The limitations it has in compared to previous editions is plus numbers to weapons and armor remain low and the more potent items require attunement where you can only have three attuned items at a time. The game Does Not Forbid magic items. The game Does Not Fall Apart when magic items exist and are plenty. You are not playing the game wrong for having them.

The math behind the game is such that a character doesn't absolutely need a particular kind or number of magic items to function at all levels. That lack of need is NOT EQUAL to meaning no magic items what so ever. Some DMs are just jaded over previous editions, especially 3E where players could purchase items, that they are having a knee-jerk reaction to ban magic items altogether. That is on them, NOT 5E. I am purposely bolding and underlining because it is precisely the loud voices of those DMs that cause threads like this of people thinking magic items might as well not exist.

These are great points. I think the reason so many low magic settings are cropping up is because previous editions forced high-magic and there is some backlash from people who wanted a little less of it. It's not just GM's, I grew tired of what has been called the Christmas Tree Effect for my characters as well. But with attunement being a thing, that's already easier to avoid. A high magic item setting in 5e would be perfectly reasonable from what I can tell.

[EggKookoo]

This forum needs an upvote button.

Just throwing in my support for this mindset as well. I mean RazDelacroix's post, not the upvote thing. I'm kind of agnostic on that.


These are great points. I think the reason so many low magic settings are cropping up is because previous editions forced high-magic and there is some backlash from people who wanted a little less of it. It's not just GM's, I grew tired of what has been called the Christmas Tree Effect for my characters as well. But with attunement being a thing, that's already easier to avoid. A high magic item setting in 5e would be perfectly reasonable from what I can tell.

Personally, I think it's easier to wrap my brain around a low-magic setting with low-level characters. Things seem more reasonable and predictable. It's kind of like time travel in stories -- once you give control over time travel to the characters, the plot tends to fall apart because there's always this thing where you can say "well, why didn't they just go back again?" or "why didn't they go back two days earlier?" It exposes the underbelly of storytelling to the audience, akin to the magician letting us see the palmed card or whatever. High-magic settings run that same risk.

If magic is extremely prevalent, why isn't it being used all over the place? The basic structure of a world is based on the limits of what people can and can't do. Just as an example, if we had Trek teleporters in our world, it would change all sorts of things. People would spread out, as commutes no longer become a thing. The auto industry would die. The airline industry would die. Hell, the ROAD "industry" would die. Anything we have in our society relating to how it impacts on travel -- like predicting the weather -- would dwindle. The list goes on, and this is just for one "magical" element.

So now imagine a world that has had easy access to lots of magic. Such a world would be fun to build, but it's not likely it would look much like a typical D&D fantasy world. Or at least, it would deviate in proportion to the availability of relatively cheap magic (and make no mistake, if magic was very common, it would become very cheap). You could try to shoehorn a standard fantasy world into a high-magic setting but it starts to expose that underbelly again.

[KorvinStarmast]

Ever try a martial art? Black belt beats white belt, every time.
That's sort of my point. Try reading my post?
(And yes, I studied/practiced Tae Kwon Do for two years)

EDIT to ADD:

Pex makes some good points.

On high magic settings:

Weiss and Hickman tried to explore that issue in their Darksword stories, in terms of how they described the people who lived with magic as a common element of their daily lives.

In a world where Wish spells exist, and where a variety of other high level spells exist, they'd need to be very rare or the verisimilitude suffers.

[dropbear8mybaby]

Ever try a martial art? Black belt beats white belt, every time.

6'2" 180 pound black belt usually (not always) beats 5'2" 120 pound black belt. Reach matters more than quickness, and while quick guys get tired, long arms don't get shorter.

Two guys the same size where one is significantly stronger? Bet on the strong guy.

Sorry, but it seems that you know very little about martial arts or fighting.

First of all, belts are not equal. I've beaten a black belt as a white belt in sparring and even in dojo kata competition. Belts are more a way of giving people a goal and a reward in many dojos. Show up for the qualification and you get it 'cause you paid for it. It's why I stopped even bothering with belts after the first and trained with the black belts and the sensei in small groups of five.

Size and weight can matter, but so too can technique, training, and experience. If one is a black belt through some gutter gym and the other is a black belt through a legit, highly skilled trainer, then I'd be putting money on the legit dude regardless of size.

Second of all, reach most definitely does not matter more than quickness. Reach means very little if you don't know how to use it. There are numerous fighters in MMA with excellent reach who don't utilise it properly and get owned by shorter, quicker guys who know how to get in under their range and land killer blows. Try telling Mighty Mouse that his quickness doesn't matter.

Third of all, strength is overrated in martial arts and fighting. The strong guy will tire out far quicker than the leaner, more athletic guy. It's a very well established tactic in MMA to survive the first round of a big, bulky fighter and then completely dominate them in the later rounds. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the leaner dudes are far more successful than the overly muscled ones. There are some exceptions, but for the most part the bulky guys rely solely on KO'ing during the first round and after that, tend to lose and don't tend to have very long careers because of it. Look at all the top fighters in the UFC. They all tend to be leaner than the lower ranked fighters.

[Knaight]

Look at all the top fighters in the UFC. They all tend to be leaner than the lower ranked fighters.
Yeah, but they are still very strong people pretty much across the board. Lean in this context doesn't mean they aren't strong so much as their considerable muscle mass is disproportionately skewed towards lean muscle.

[KorvinStarmast]

... being able to manipulate the Weave in some fashion is not the same thing as binding the Weave to an object.

A comparison might be between the number of people who can sing (almost everyone) and the number who can compose simple tunes (a smaller number) and the number who can compose for full orchestra with 6 vocal parts in the Chorus (much less than 1%).

That's roughly the same as "Can do magic", "Can create simple magic like potions or scrolls", and "Can create +3 swords".

Artifacts would be Beethoven's 9th.
Fantastic analogy.

[Vogonjeltz]

If magic is extremely prevalent, why isn't it being used all over the place? The basic structure of a world is based on the limits of what people can and can't do. Just as an example, if we had Trek teleporters in our world, it would change all sorts of things. People would spread out, as commutes no longer become a thing. The auto industry would die. The airline industry would die. Hell, the ROAD "industry" would die. Anything we have in our society relating to how it impacts on travel -- like predicting the weather -- would dwindle. The list goes on, and this is just for one "magical" element.

Magic is, but specific types of magic aren't, and the potential existence of a thing doesn't always impact the application.

Regarding the technology example, things might change, for those who have access to those teleporters, but it depends on how they work (i.e. can you teleport anywhere or is it like a subway, you go from station to station? How do you get back once you're there?) and how much load they can accomodate, and how much it costs to operate. Even if you had a teleporter or teleportation hub (like an airport) for a city, it might be more convenient to drive.

The concorde was way faster than any other plane, but its negatives far outweighed the benefit. Just because a technology features an improvement on the service end does not mean it's practical.

Magic items are like this in that the cost for even the low end magic items is typically vastly above that of reasonable alternatives, so even though it's theoretically possible for people to make these things, the investment required is cost prohibitive.

[dropbear8mybaby]

Yeah, but they are still very strong people pretty much across the board. Lean in this context doesn't mean they aren't strong so much as their considerable muscle mass is disproportionately skewed towards lean muscle.

Yes but in the context within which I was using it, lean people were being compared to bulky people. It's a well established and scientifically valid fact that the more muscle you have, the more oxygen you have to pump to them, the more waste products you have to remove from your muscles and the more energy you have to burn to fuel them. So the bulky fighters gas quickly whilst the leaner fighters just keep on keeping on.

I believe this is also true in the military where the stereotypical massively muscled grunt is actually a rarity due to the physical exertion requirements of carrying crap-tons of gear for miles and miles. I've never been in the military though so it's only what I've heard from others who have.

[Pex]

This thread demonstrates a long-standing problem with D&D, namely that it could never handle the power it gives to its PCs. There's a gulf between how the game treats characters of a given level, and what they can actually do. As usual, it hits non-magical characters harder, since the game doesn't really have a concept for how to describe them beyond "really good with a weapon" or "really clever and skilled". But their abilities, pathetic as they may be, still go way past that by measure of pure numbers. 5e flattens the power curve, of course, but it's still there and can't be done away with without making some changes to the system's assumptions, which no one at WotC has ever been willing to do.

As far as spells go, it certainly is true that we shouldn't confuse "magical" with "extraordinary". Magic isn't extraordinary. In a world like D&D's, a first-level wizard shouldn't have an inherently higher status than any other qualified specialist. A 10th level wizard is extraordinary. So is a 10th level fighter, or ranger. Or a scholar. Or craftsman. It's all different sorts of power and skill. D&D has simply always favoured only one sort of power and ignored the rest.

Disagree.

The game can handle the power just fine. It is some DMs who can't handle it from the innocent inexperienced and just need to learn, the DMs who for some reason cannot grasp the concept, the DMs who refuse to learn or adapt and resent the game moving beyond their personal set ways, to the tyrannical DMs who hate player characters being able to do anything at all as an afront against their own personal power.

[SouthpawSoldier]

Fantastic analogy.

I agree. I considered World of Time a parallel; while there are some fantastically powerful channelers, few have the ability to create angreal or sa'angreal.

[EggKookoo]

Magic is, but specific types of magic aren't, and the potential existence of a thing doesn't always impact the application.

Regarding the technology example, things might change, for those who have access to those teleporters, but it depends on how they work (i.e. can you teleport anywhere or is it like a subway, you go from station to station? How do you get back once you're there?) and how much load they can accomodate, and how much it costs to operate. Even if you had a teleporter or teleportation hub (like an airport) for a city, it might be more convenient to drive.

The concorde was way faster than any other plane, but its negatives far outweighed the benefit. Just because a technology features an improvement on the service end does not mean it's practical.

Magic items are like this in that the cost for even the low end magic items is typically vastly above that of reasonable alternatives, so even though it's theoretically possible for people to make these things, the investment required is cost prohibitive.

I've been talking about a high-magic setting in the sense that magic users are fairly common. If magic users are common, then magic use is common. Anything that's common is also relatively inexpensive.


The game can handle the power just fine. It is some DMs who can't handle it from the innocent inexperienced and just need to learn, the DMs who for some reason cannot grasp the concept, the DMs who refuse to learn or adapt and resent the game moving beyond their personal set ways, to the tyrannical DMs who hate player characters being able to do anything at all as an afront against their own personal power.

Or just prefer the aesthetics of a low-magic setting.

[Clistenes]

NPCs don't have class levels in 5e, they are those Bandits, Commoners, Bersekers, Assassins, Acolytes...etc., from the MM, that are built as monsters and probably don't even gain XP like PCs do.

For all we know only 1 among 1,000 people is able to learn magic, and among those magic-capable people, 99 of every 100 are mere Acolytes.

[Morcleon]

NPCs don't have class levels in 5e, they are those Bandits, Commoners, Bersekers, Assassins, Acolytes...etc., from the MM, that are built as monsters and probably don't even gain XP like PCs do.

For all we know only 1 among 1,000 people is able to learn magic, and among those magic-capable people, 99 of every 100 are mere Acolytes.

This is very much dependent on the DM. It's also possible that everyone has class levels and wizards and clerics are 1 in 10 people. IMO, I don't really see the appeal in a world where only the PCs and very few others are capable of powerful magics.

[dropbear8mybaby]

This is very much dependent on the DM. It's also possible that everyone has class levels and wizards and clerics are 1 in 10 people. IMO, I don't really see the appeal in a world where only the PCs and very few others are capable of powerful magics.

And I despise settings where everyone and their dog can do magic. Personal preference, isn't it wonderful?

[Morcleon]

And I despise settings where everyone and their dog can do magic. Personal preference, isn't it wonderful?

Yep. :smallbiggrin:

[Xetheral]

NPCs don't have class levels in 5e, they are those Bandits, Commoners, Bersekers, Assassins, Acolytes...etc., from the MM, that are built as monsters and probably don't even gain XP like PCs do.

For all we know only 1 among 1,000 people is able to learn magic, and among those magic-capable people, 99 of every 100 are mere Acolytes.

Unlike in 4e, in 5e the designers have left open the possibility to design NPCs using PC rules.

[Pex]

Or just prefer the aesthetics of a low-magic setting.

"the DMs who refuse to learn or adapt and resent the game moving beyond their personal set ways" for those who complain about D&D.

[dropbear8mybaby]

"the dms who refuse to learn or adapt and resent the game moving beyond their personal set ways" for those who complain about d&d.

badwrongfun!

[pwykersotz]

Unlike in 4e, in 5e the designers have left open the possibility to design NPCs using PC rules.

I love the flexibility.

[Pex]

badwrongfun!

No, pay attention to the context. Liking a low-magic aesthetic game world is absolutely fine. Complaining about D&D, how it can't handle giving PCs power, it's broken, and all sorts of complaints because as the levels progress it goes beyond your personal comfort zone that you refuse to adapt to, that problem is on you, not the game. The game is not broken. The game does not fail in handling PCs with power. It's the DM just not liking it and calling D&D names because of it.

Example: Being enraged by the Teleport spell because the party no longer has to takes months of traveling time to deal with the minutiae of the local inhabitants. An adaptable DM would just let Teleport happen so the party can get on with the main adventure already that's the whole point of the campaign plot. Sometimes teleportation would be the only way to get the adventure plot, or it's needed because if they take the months of normal traveling to get there, the Evil Plot happens before they arrive and the world is destroyed. Once in a while a plot isn't urgent Go Now! to deal with but the party needs to take the months of traveling time to deal with Important Stuff that is more urgent and/or gather information that will help with that plot so teleportation is a bad idea for that particular instance.

Alternatively, if the DM really just doesn't want to bother with the high level stuff the campaign just ends naturally at some level < 12 or 10 or whatever. Maybe they play E6. They just don't complain about D&D not handling power because they think everything is hunkydory; they just don't want the high level stuff for that particular campaign. It's also possible they conclude D&D inherently has too much magic for the particular campaign they want to run and play some other RPG system altogether and still not complain about or call D&D names for not being suitable. They'll play D&D some other time. I'm not talking about these DMs at all.

[georgie_leech]

Unlike in 4e, in 5e the designers have left open the possibility to design NPCs using PC rules.

Quibble: The reason that 4e doesn't design NPC's like PC's is that it wrecks the math. PC's are designed to be lower on hit points but have higher damage than most of the foes they face. I've tried throwing N"PC's" at players before, it always boiled down to who went first. Every time. 5e, having different math, can naturally accommodate this design better.

[EggKookoo]

badwrongfun!
No, pay attention to the context.

I have to admit I understand dropbear8mybaby's reaction. The context was clear, but the subtext is that you disapprove of anyone who plays a low-magic game. Tone matters.


No, pay attention to the context. Liking a low-magic aesthetic game world is absolutely fine. Complaining about D&D, how it can't handle giving PCs power, it's broken, and all sorts of complaints because as the levels progress it goes beyond your personal comfort zone that you refuse to adapt to, that problem is on you, not the game. The game is not broken. The game does not fail in handling PCs with power. It's the DM just not liking it and calling D&D names because of it.

I agree that a DM who complains about D&D having too much power can't handle the game. But by "handle" I just mean that said DM should just houserule out anything he doesn't like. He's well within his rights to do this even RAW. That's one of the things I like about 5e. Most of the editions have had some kind of DMG lip service to "feel free to change a rule if it doesn't fit your campaign" but 5e, to me, seems to really embrace this mentality.

There's no point complaining about something you have absolute control over.

[Morty]

Disagree.

The game can handle the power just fine. It is some DMs who can't handle it from the innocent inexperienced and just need to learn, the DMs who for some reason cannot grasp the concept, the DMs who refuse to learn or adapt and resent the game moving beyond their personal set ways, to the tyrannical DMs who hate player characters being able to do anything at all as an afront against their own personal power.

Pinning everything on the DM doesn't help anyone. A DM can deal with the dissonance between the game's fiction and its rules, but that doesn't make the dissonance go away.

"It's the DM's job to make it work!" is a non-answer that doesn't tell us anything. The DM's job is to tell a story, no more and no less. If the game's rules interfere with the story that the game's fiction purports to tell, then we have a problem.

[EggKookoo]

Pinning everything on the DM doesn't help anyone. A DM can deal with the dissonance between the game's fiction and its rules, but that doesn't make the dissonance go away.

"It's the DM's job to make it work!" is a non-answer that doesn't tell us anything. The DM's job is to tell a story, no more and no less. If the game's rules interfere with the story that the game's fiction purports to tell, then we have a problem.

I'm of the opposite mindset. The story is what emerges from play, and is not the province of any single participant.

As I see it, the DM's job is multifold:


Run the game, meaning act as a referee and a narrator of everything that happens outside the control of the players.
Make rulings, which means coming up with rules for circumstances outside RAW, modifying rules that don't make sense or are unwieldy, and even eliminating rules and/or game content that doesn't fit with his campaign.
Create the specific setting. Even if using a published setting like FR, your FR will be different from my FR in a number of ways, subtle or otherwise.
Create the content (encounters, challenges, plot threads, etc.), either from scratch or using a published adventure as a basis.
Of course, play the parts of all of the NPCs and other creatures encountered by the PCs.
Generally make sure things are moving along, which is just another way of saying "run the game."


At no point is it the DM's sole responsibility to "tell a story." At most, the DM can drop plot points, but the story comes from what actually happens once the players are done mangling them.

[Morty]

That's great. And if the game's rules interfere with those tasks of a DM - like, say, by being in conflict with the game's fiction - it's a problem.

[zinycor]

That's great. And if the game's rules interfere with those tasks of a DM - like, say, by being in conflict with the game's fiction - it's a problem.

Completely agree, that was my main problem with 3.5 and pathfinder.

[EggKookoo]

That's great. And if the game's rules interfere with those tasks of a DM - like, say, by being in conflict with the game's fiction - it's a problem.

That's virtually impossible in 5e, since the rules explicitly say that if a rule interferes with what you wan to do as a DM, you're encouraged to ignore or change that rule.

Further, it's stated outright in the DMG that when it comes to the flavor of your fiction -- high magic vs. low magic, attentive gods vs. absent gods, and so forth -- it's entirely up to you. At no point in 5e does it say you must go with a high fantasy or high magic setting vs. a low fantasy or low magic setting. In fact, it lists a bunch of approaches you might take as examples, and encourages you to come up with your own.

So basically, the game's rules can't come into conflict with the game's fiction. If you think it does, that just means you're stuck in some kind of mindset that requires D&D to mean a specific setting.

[Knaight]

That's virtually impossible in 5e, since the rules explicitly say that if a rule interferes with what you wan to do as a DM, you're encouraged to ignore or change that rule.

This doesn't follow. I consider 5e pretty functional, but as an example consider that you could make a game that is a poorly made inconsistent mess, and then thoroughly encourage changing and ignoring the rules. The game is still going to get in your way all the time, because it's a headache to deal with. With 5e, this still applies to some extent whenever trying to apply it to something it's not particularly good at.

[EggKookoo]

This doesn't follow. I consider 5e pretty functional, but as an example consider that you could make a game that is a poorly made inconsistent mess, and then thoroughly encourage changing and ignoring the rules. The game is still going to get in your way all the time, because it's a headache to deal with. With 5e, this still applies to some extent whenever trying to apply it to something it's not particularly good at.

Morty said:

"A DM can deal with the dissonance between the game's fiction and its rules, but that doesn't make the dissonance go away."

I'm just saying that if the game encourages you to modify its rules, then by definition, it does. If you find a dissonance between how 5e's rules work and the fictional world it's trying to present with those rules, and you take advantage of how 5e encourages you to tweak the rules as you see fit, then in fact you are making the dissonance go away. I mean, obviously it doesn't go away if you ignore the part of the rules where it says "hey, if you have a problem with any of this, feel free to adjust, and oh, hey, here are a half-dozen suggestions for how you do this." But then you only have yourself to blame for ignoring a chunk of the DMG. It even gets into magic being commonplace vs. magic being exceptionally rare.

This is so obvious it makes me wonder if we're crossing paths here somehow.

[Morty]

Adjusting individual rules when they get in the way is one thing, and hardly unique to 5e. Adjusting the way hit points, levels, combat and spells work? Not quite the same thing. They make up for the framework of the system, and it informs the fiction. I don't see what's so baffling about acknowledging that.

[EggKookoo]

Adjusting individual rules when they get in the way is one thing, and hardly unique to 5e. Adjusting the way hit points, levels, combat and spells work? Not quite the same thing.

Obviously the more "core" the rule you change, the greater the implications of your change. But in the end it's the same thing. But I'm not seeing what this has to do with the argument.


They make up for the framework of the system, and it informs the fiction. I don't see what's so baffling about acknowledging that.

Assuming you mean "they make up the framework of the system," I understand and acknowledge it. All I'm saying is that when you see a dissonant rule, and you alter the rule to compensate, you have, in fact, eliminated the dissonance. Nothing more than that.

[georgie_leech]

Obviously the more "core" the rule you change, the greater the implications of your change. But in the end it's the same thing. But I'm not seeing what this has to do with the argument.



Assuming you mean "they make up the framework of the system," I understand and acknowledge it. All I'm saying is that when you see a dissonant rule, and you alter the rule to compensate, you have, in fact, eliminated the dissonance. Nothing more than that.

The point is that a well integrated rules-setting game doesn't have those dissonances in the first place. Just saying 'if you find any errors you can fix it' doesn't excuse them. Encouraging DM's to adjust rules as they see fit is not the same as having a setting consistent with the mechanics.

[pwykersotz]

Adjusting individual rules when they get in the way is one thing, and hardly unique to 5e. Adjusting the way hit points, levels, combat and spells work? Not quite the same thing. They make up for the framework of the system, and it informs the fiction. I don't see what's so baffling about acknowledging that.

Wait...hitpoints, levels, and spells? When did that get brought up? I thought the argument was that rules can be altered easily to make room for different narrative settings, not that 5e was borked from the ground up.


The point is that a well integrated rules-setting game doesn't have those dissonances in the first place. Just saying 'if you find any errors you can fix it' doesn't excuse them. Encouraging DM's to adjust rules as they see fit is not the same as having a setting consistent with the mechanics.

Which game system has no errors? :smallconfused:

[EggKookoo]

Which game system has no errors? :smallconfused:

That was my next question. One of the reasons WotC made a point to bless DM fiat in 5e is because it was happening so much in 3e (and I guess 4e) that it only made sense to go that way. This is how 1e/2e worked -- the DM was not just a rules Google-bot. His job wasn't just to know the rules. His job was to actively interpret the rules and create a game out of them. Not all DMs can do this, of course. It takes practice and vision.

[Pex]

Pinning everything on the DM doesn't help anyone. A DM can deal with the dissonance between the game's fiction and its rules, but that doesn't make the dissonance go away.

"It's the DM's job to make it work!" is a non-answer that doesn't tell us anything. The DM's job is to tell a story, no more and no less. If the game's rules interfere with the story that the game's fiction purports to tell, then we have a problem.

Yes, but it's the DM who has the problem. Some just don't resent or complain about it and change what they need. To be the game's problem would mean it fails to function for a great majority of players who try it. That's not the case for D&D in any edition.** An example in D&D where it is the game's fault is 3E's Truenamer where the rules as given itself don't work because the math makes it impossible without using one specific build with specific feats and magic items. The generic high level stuff of 3E with players having lots of powerful stuff work just fine. Particular DMs don't like them, but the game itself works. Of those DMs who don't like them and call D&D names because of it, they're the ones who can't or won't work with the game. It's not the game not working with them.

It's still possible that the D&D game system as a whole just won't work for the particular DM. He could be better off playing some other system that matches the campaign he wants to run rather than running in D&D but female dogging about it all the time.

**If needed clarified to mean when the edition was first published. Many players who switched to a new edition won't ever go back to play an earlier one. I won't play 2E again. I never played 4E and never will. For my purposes I'm not counting this as the game's fault. Each edition worked well for its fans at the time that what was the official current D&D edition.

[SharkForce]

of course the game works for the majority of players. if it didn't work for them, they wouldn't be playing it, and therefore would not be players. that can be said for any game, regardless of how good or bad the system is.

[RazDelacroix]

Ya know, sometimes I gotta look back at that opening post to remind myself of what this whole thread was supposed to be about. Specifically, that some folks find it odd that there is almost no class that cannot obtain magical power on it's own and yet the absence of magical items was popular.

To give myself some unnecessary giggling, I now present, a conversation between top-hat wearing gentlemen. They shall be from my own campaign world so make of that what you will. Hopefully it will be popcorn worthy.

"Why I say, Lord Palish!"

"Oh! Lord Yinberg! What brings you here this fine day?"

"Well I was troppling about the promenade when I was struck by a most peculiar observation. I felt it necessary to see if perhaps you share this insight into the world around us."

"Well then please, do share your keen observation! Let us compare my ole boy!"

"There seems to be an absolute plague of guttermagi in the city!"

"A plague of low-born spellsingers? How terrible!"

"Indeed! And when I went to see my personal artificer about the matter, he told me the cost to outfit an army would be astronomically prohibitive!"

"What sort of armaments were you proposing? Perhaps I may lend some insight into this most tragic budget."

"You remember those pair of rather spiffy blades we used back in our hunting days?"

"Ah yes, those were very bright blades. Good for turning a roaring wyvern into the dining hall's paramount trophy display."

"I thought to outfit, at the very least, the whole constabulary with such fine weapons!"

"Hmm, well my ole Brother of the Boot, as an upstanding and honest gentleman wizard, I will have to in this matter agree with your artificer. Those blades, fine as they are though we did find their better sisters later, were created from a process that is much different from the industrial magic we use these days."

"How so?"

"You see, in industry magic, the purpose is to mass-create good strong works in good time. Blades for the constabulary watch can be strong, light, cheap for the tax-pockets, and have a fine mark to denote their proper ownership. Industry magic has helped the process of creating good works that would have taken folk of prior generations months or years to accomplish. Why, I even carry around a fine pocket-adamantine switcher's blade in case the ole' blighter's stick me in the old... Ah, sorry, tangent."

"Of course ole boy. Carry on."

"Thank you. Now those blades of solid lightning we acquired cannot be remade so easily by today's industry magic. There is simply too much force of nature to wrangle about to safely let common overall-wearing orc-sorts to handle the Weave."

"However, my cane-blade even has a bit of glowing to it, but it does not cut so well. It was even made by those fine Scorch chaps!"

"Ah yes, a byproduct of industry magic does lend itself to fine aesthetic qualities. Or, if done right, even a modicum of something akin to the art of page magic. Like those ambulatory tea sets!"

"The Lady Rosewood does like her teapot's little dance."

"How is her husband these days?"

"Right ready to kill us all if we get too close to her."

"Ah, the baby is coming in fine then. Good for the family."

"Yet what of this plague of guttermagi? How can we defend our pockets from so many rapscallions?"

"I was pondering that. Did they all look the same?"

"Yes!"

"Same hats, same ears, same face?"

"Yes indeed!"

"Same sword, same ferret?"

"Yes and yes! A plague I say!"

"My ole boy... It's not a bunch of rapscallion guttermagi. There is no plague."

"There is not? But I saw-"

"An arcane trickster."

"As in the singular?"

"Yes."

"How do you know this?"

"The spell is called Mirror Image. Which means this is all a distraction from something. WARN THE PEOPLE! RAZ DELACROIX IS UP TO SOMETHING! CALL IN THE WARFORGED!"

[georgie_leech]

Which game system has no errors? :smallconfused:

Didn't say there was one, just pointing out that if someone has a problem with the way the written rules and setting interact, the fact that they can change it doesn't mean it wasn't a problem in the first place. Easily fixed sure, but it can be unpleasant to run into just the same, particularly if it comes up mid-game when a player notices something you didn't.

If I might draw a comparison, in Fallout 3 there's a moment when you're faced with the choice to sacrifice yourself to lethal radiation, or make a specific NPC do it. Originally, your companion would refuse. However, by this point it's quite possible to have a companion immune to or even healed by radiation; the mechanics didn't match the story the game was trying to present. The fact that it would haven taken me a few minutes to download a mod to fix it didn't help in the moment.

To be clear, this isn't a problem I deal with much as I usually home brew my settings and ignore the printed ones. But I can still see where the people who have a problem with it when it comes up are coming from.

[Morty]

Wait...hitpoints, levels, and spells? When did that get brought up? I thought the argument was that rules can be altered easily to make room for different narrative settings, not that 5e was borked from the ground up.

I don't know who was making that argument, but it wasn't me. My point is that the framework of D&D's rules has implications that the game's fiction has historically failed to take into account. 4e is the only edition that made an effort, and it was a pretty half-hearted one.

[Knaight]

Morty said:

"A DM can deal with the dissonance between the game's fiction and its rules, but that doesn't make the dissonance go away."

I'm just saying that if the game encourages you to modify its rules, then by definition, it does. If you find a dissonance between how 5e's rules work and the fictional world it's trying to present with those rules, and you take advantage of how 5e encourages you to tweak the rules as you see fit, then in fact you are making the dissonance go away. I mean, obviously it doesn't go away if you ignore the part of the rules where it says "hey, if you have a problem with any of this, feel free to adjust, and oh, hey, here are a half-dozen suggestions for how you do this." But then you only have yourself to blame for ignoring a chunk of the DMG. It even gets into magic being commonplace vs. magic being exceptionally rare.
And I'm saying that it doesn't. The dissonance is still there, you just have clearance to try and tackle the problem. If the game provided actual tools for specializing it for dramatically different things the way well built generic systems do then there might be a point, but as is all that line actually does is explicitly state that the DM can try and fix the problems that are there. It's also in a complex and interconnected system with a lot of moving parts, so getting 5e to work outside of the parameters it works well for is going to be extremely difficult compared to other games.

[EggKookoo]

And I'm saying that it doesn't. The dissonance is still there, you just have clearance to try and tackle the problem. If the game provided actual tools for specializing it for dramatically different things the way well built generic systems do then there might be a point, but as is all that line actually does is explicitly state that the DM can try and fix the problems that are there. It's also in a complex and interconnected system with a lot of moving parts, so getting 5e to work outside of the parameters it works well for is going to be extremely difficult compared to other games.

Can you provide an example of the kind of dissonance you mean?

[MoutonRustique]

[snip]
"Why I say, Lord Palish!"

"Oh! Lord Yinberg! What brings you here this fine day?" ... [snip]
+1 (or other notation of approval)

[Pex]

of course the game works for the majority of players. if it didn't work for them, they wouldn't be playing it, and therefore would not be players. that can be said for any game, regardless of how good or bad the system is.

Right, which means D&D does not have a problem with giving player characters power, as was supposed which I disagreed. However, if it is a bad system, it would not be published for long. That cannot be said of any edition of D&D.

I did not like 4E. 4E was published, played, and well liked by a great many for years. Therefore, I had a problem with 4E. 4E did not have a problem with me. I chose not to play it. My prerogative. The game worked just fine. It wasn't just fine for me.

[Knaight]

Can you provide an example of the kind of dissonance you mean?

Sure, though my point has more to do with the concept of a game not being able to have dissonance because it has some text saying that it can be tweaked than anything. Consider D&D 3.5 as an example here, with a hypothetical campaign setting that repeatedly claims that it is largely mundane and low powered, complete with what is basically the MM for NPCs (including generic terms, like "city guard of X city", "Y sea spice merchant" etc.), where said NPCs have class levels using the existing classes, with the full level range.

That wouldn't work particularly well. Even in 5e there's a huge growth in power between levels, and that's with several major steps made to tone it down. The mechanics model a world of extremely powerful people interspersed with those that have essentially no power to do anything to them. Yet a fix would be incredibly, painfully difficult. Either the classes would have to be redesigned to a far shallower power curve, or a huge swath of the characters in the MM for NPCs would need to be rebuilt at lower level in a system that doesn't exactly have the fastest character creation system.

There's a dissonance there between the hypothetical setting and the system. A few sentences to the effect of "you can change all this" doesn't help things. Coming back to 5e, the core rules are a solid 900 pages and the mechanics are deeply interrelated. Making significant changes to a system that hefty is going to take a lot of work. If there's a dissonance between what the system does and what is wanted, solving that is a significant problem.

[EggKookoo]

Sure, though my point has more to do with the concept of a game not being able to have dissonance because it has some text saying that it can be tweaked than anything.

As to that specifically, I'm just saying if you compensate for the discrepancy or dissonance with a ruling, then you've effectively eliminated it. I mean, sure, you know it's still there in the core rules but since you've overruled it, it's no longer affecting you.


Consider D&D 3.5 as an example here, with a hypothetical campaign setting that repeatedly claims that it is largely mundane and low powered, complete with what is basically the MM for NPCs (including generic terms, like "city guard of X city", "Y sea spice merchant" etc.), where said NPCs have class levels using the existing classes, with the full level range.

This is confusing me. Don't worry, it's me -- the coffee is still on its way out to the bloodstream. But IIRC, the MM NPCs don't have class levels. Or do they? I know somewhere in the DMG or MM it has a system for granting class levels to monsters, but that's not what we're talking about, right? I thought MM NPCs were pretty much as-is, not level-based.


That wouldn't work particularly well. Even in 5e there's a huge growth in power between levels, and that's with several major steps made to tone it down. The mechanics model a world of extremely powerful people interspersed with those that have essentially no power to do anything to them. Yet a fix would be incredibly, painfully difficult. Either the classes would have to be redesigned to a far shallower power curve, or a huge swath of the characters in the MM for NPCs would need to be rebuilt at lower level in a system that doesn't exactly have the fastest character creation system.

Ok, it sounds like you're saying the MM NPCs do have levels. I'm sure you're right but that's not how I remember it. I'm at work now so I can't go check my MM.

Or are you saying it's problematic to have PCs with levels up against NPCs without levels?


There's a dissonance there between the hypothetical setting and the system. A few sentences to the effect of "you can change all this" doesn't help things. Coming back to 5e, the core rules are a solid 900 pages and the mechanics are deeply interrelated. Making significant changes to a system that hefty is going to take a lot of work. If there's a dissonance between what the system does and what is wanted, solving that is a significant problem.

Ok, so what would happen if you cut the number of available spell slots in half across the board? And you only allow half of those to be recovered on a long rest, or you make the player make some kind of roll to see how many slots his PC recovers (kind of like healing Hit Dice)? It should result in a game where magic users still technically have access to all of their spells but not nearly as often.

How badly would that break 5e overall? I mean, it would be hell for casters, but that's kind of the point if you're going low-magic.

That's just one way to do it. Another is to rule that there are only X Wizards in the world at any one time (including any PC Wizards). Come up with limits for the other casters as well. That shouldn't really break the game.

Part of what will determine your solution is how you define "low magic." Does it mean magic is generally low-power? Does it mean magic overall is extremely rare? Does it mean magic using PCs are very rare even if "natural" magic is commonplace?

[KorvinStarmast]

The story is what emerges from play, and is not the province of any single participant.

As I see it, the DM's job is multifold:
(snip a very nice post)

Crhis gets what the DM's role has been for 40+ years.

I am not sure what some of the other posters understand as the DM's role.

EDIT to add plaudits:
Raz is on a roll! :smallbiggrin:

FWIW: Arcane Trickster you can all blame on Fritz Lieber, who first penned "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser" stories ... the Grey Mouser was able to use some spells due to once having been a wizard's apprentice ... and Lieber's stories were some of the core formative influences on the game even existing.

[EggKookoo]

Crhis gets what the DM's role has been for 40+ years.

I am not sure what some of the other posters understand as the DM's role.

I bet you it's a grognard thing. I've been playing (various RPGs) in one form or another since the 70s. I cut my teeth on old style "DM fiat is god" games. I've been lucky enough to play under some very good and some very bad DMs.

It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation with age or at least length of gaming history to how people view the DM's role.

[KorvinStarmast]

I bet you it's a grognard thing. I've been playing in one form or another since the 70s. I cut my teeth on old style "DM fiat is god" games. I've been lucky enough to play under some very good and some very bad DMs.

It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation with age or at least length of gaming history to how people view the DM's role.
It may have to do with exposure to the great variety of RPG's that are not D&D. When you get out of a game where the origin was a campaign (roots = wargame) and into a game where "the play is the thing" the role the GM or DM plays can vary.

My view of the DM's role in a D&D game is rooted in D&D, not other RPGs.

I don't think it's just a grognard thing, but what it "is" requires a many pages long rant ... and will be quite Off Topic for this discussion.

[Knaight]

As to that specifically, I'm just saying if you compensate for the discrepancy or dissonance with a ruling, then you've effectively eliminated it. I mean, sure, you know it's still there in the core rules but since you've overruled it, it's no longer affecting you.

Sure. That doesn't mean it's not a problem with the game though, because the state of the core rules can make compensating for something take a whole lot of work. That's what my example was meant to highlight - the game has a problem, the only way to fix the problem is to systematically redo hundreds of pages of system stuff, and a blurb about "you can just change whatever" doesn't magically make the problem disappear.

[KorvinStarmast]

Sure. That doesn't mean it's not a problem with the game though, because the state of the core rules can make compensating for something take a whole lot of work. That's what my example was meant to highlight - the game has a problem, the only way to fix the problem is to systematically redo hundreds of pages of system stuff, and a blurb about "you can just change whatever" doesn't magically make the problem disappear.
That bolded part?
Hyperbole.
Overstatement.
Mountain made from Molehill.

[Knaight]

That bolded part?
Hyperbole.
Overstatement.
Mountain made from Molehill.

Read the rest of the context. The example is a hypothetical illustration of how the "you can change these mechanics" blurb doesn't mean anything. It's not related to 5e specifically, merely the argument that because 5e has a blurb about the DM changing mechanics it is immune to having dissonance.

[KorvinStarmast]

Read the rest of the context. The example is a hypothetical illustration of how the "you can change these mechanics" blurb doesn't mean anything. It's not related to 5e specifically, merely the argument that because 5e has a blurb about the DM changing mechanics it is immune to having dissonance.
I have DM'd no small amount in my day.
DMing requires work.
So, we work.

[Knaight]

I have DM'd no small amount in my day.
DMing requires work.
So, we work.

Any system can be made functional and solid with enough work put in to fix it, that doesn't make every system good. Some paths of getting the desired game are far more efficient than others, and in many cases that has to do with systems that work better to begin with. On top of that, the time we spend working on getting the system to work properly to begin with is time that we don't get to spend on everything else about the game.

[KorvinStarmast]

Any system can be made functional and solid with enough work put in to fix it, that doesn't make every system good. Some paths of getting the desired game are far more efficient than others, and in many cases that has to do with systems that work better to begin with. On top of that, the time we spend working on getting the system to work properly to begin with is time that we don't get to spend on everything else about the game.
Heck or time for stuff we should be doing in RL. :smallbiggrin: (Fear the spousal +2 Frying Pan of Rage! :smallbiggrin: )

If a game is too high maintenance for you, switch games or cut the fat in the game that you don't want to put up with.

You're the DM.

[EggKookoo]

I think if you feel like you need to tweak something in the game, and that tweak would necessarily result in "hundreds of pages" of modifications, you might want to rethink why you need to make that tweak. If you really feel that "hundreds of pages" of rules are wrong, I humbly suggest you're playing the wrong game.

I don't play PF because I prefer 5e. I could probably make PF work like 5e, but that would, indeed, take hundreds of pages (or more) of modifications and rewrites. Even if I was insane enough to tackle such a task, I'd be a moron to claim it somehow represented a problem with PF.

[Pex]

I think if you feel like you need to tweak something in the game, and that tweak would necessarily result in "hundreds of pages" of modifications, you might want to rethink why you need to make that tweak. If you really feel that "hundreds of pages" of rules are wrong, I humbly suggest you're playing the wrong game.

I don't play PF because I prefer 5e. I could probably make PF work like 5e, but that would, indeed, take hundreds of pages (or more) of modifications and rewrites. Even if I was insane enough to tackle such a task, I'd be a moron to claim it somehow represented a problem with PF.

Exactly! :smallsmile:

[Ruslan]

I find itweird that in 5e, magic users are very common. there is no 1 class that lacks the use of magic powers...
yet the absence of magical items is popular.
I understand the mechanic concept behind it, but thematically it's pretty weird that even a common rogue can cast spells, yet no magical items to be found easily
Note that the 5e spell lists lacks Permanency or any equivalent of such. There are no built-in rules mechanisms to achieve a permanent magical effect (Teleportation Circle and some others being notable exceptions). So the explanation is very simple - any noob can create a magical effect with limited duration and area of effect. Binding said effect into an item, to be used again and again - that's more tricky, and not many can do this.

Anyway, I'm not really viewing this as a bug that needs to be explained, more of a feature to be used. It is what it is.

[Pex]

Note that the 5e spell lists lacks Permanency or any equivalent of such. There are no built-in rules mechanisms to achieve a permanent magical effect (Teleportation Circle and some others being notable exceptions). So the explanation is very simple - any noob can create a magical effect with limited duration and area of effect. Binding said effect into an item, to be used again and again - that's more tricky, and not many can do this.

Anyway, I'm not really viewing this as a bug that needs to be explained, more of a feature to be used. It is what it is.

5E allows for PCs to create magic items. It allows for formulas to create them as part of treasure. 5E chose not to have rules specifications on how to make magic items, leaving it up to the DM to decide how to make it work. Magic items exist in 5E. Creating magic items exists in 5E. If either or neither exist in the campaign one is playing and not liking that, blame the DM not 5E.

[EggKookoo]

5E allows for PCs to create magic items. It allows for formulas to create them as part of treasure. 5E chose not to have rules specifications on how to make magic items, leaving it up to the DM to decide how to make it work. Magic items exist in 5E. Creating magic items exists in 5E. If either or neither exist in the campaign one is playing and not liking that, blame the DM not 5E.

It does have a section on creating magic items (page 285). It has more information on how to make sentient magic items on page 214. This information is pretty simple because the process is pretty simple. It's mostly a matter of deciding what features the item will have (it provides about 80 pages of example magic items to help give you an idea of what's balanced). It has tables for choosing a sentient item's form of communication, sensory capability, alignment, and purpose. It also has a bit on creating artifacts (page 219) with similar tables and examples.

There's plenty of information there if you want to create magic items, and to help you make sure the item is balanced properly for your campaign. I know, I have seven (well, eight, put one is a pair of whips) in my current game.

Edit: Wait, wait, I'm sorry. You meant rules for PCs creating magic items? Not the DM creating them as treasure?

[Pex]

It does have a section on creating magic items (page 285). It has more information on how to make sentient magic items on page 214. This information is pretty simple because the process is pretty simple. It's mostly a matter of deciding what features the item will have (it provides about 80 pages of example magic items to help give you an idea of what's balanced). It has tables for choosing a sentient item's form of communication, sensory capability, alignment, and purpose. It also has a bit on creating artifacts (page 219) with similar tables and examples.

There's plenty of information there if you want to create magic items, and to help you make sure the item is balanced properly for your campaign. I know, I have seven (well, eight, put one is a pair of whips) in my current game.

Edit: Wait, wait, I'm sorry. You meant rules for PCs creating magic items? Not the DM creating them as treasure?

5E allows for both. The 5E PC can't be the magic item factory a 3E PC could be, and I'm not in opposition to that concept, but he can create items if he wants. If the DM forbids it, that's for the player to discuss with the DM, not an issue of 5E specifically. Whether the DM is being a tyrant or not in his refusal, that is subjective and dependent on the campaign and hopefully group discussion before the game started. I have to admit a DM saying no does not automatically mean he's a tyrant. Context is everything.

[EggKookoo]

5E allows for both. The 5E PC can't be the magic item factory a 3E PC could be, and I'm not in opposition to that concept, but he can create items if he wants. If the DM forbids it, that's for the player to discuss with the DM, not an issue of 5E specifically. Whether the DM is being a tyrant or not in his refusal, that is subjective and dependent on the campaign and hopefully group discussion before the game started. I have to admit a DM saying no does not automatically mean he's a tyrant. Context is everything.

I went back and looked it up after I had posted. :smallbiggrin:

I don't get into this much because my players tend not to be the types to create their own magic items.

[Mara]

I do not find levels to be all that uncommon in 5e settings, but class levels could be. Check out NPC bandits. The chief has 10HD but is CR2.

[Vogonjeltz]

I've been talking about a high-magic setting in the sense that magic users are fairly common. If magic users are common, then magic use is common. Anything that's common is also relatively inexpensive.

Not so. Cars and jewelry are both common in the world, neither is inexpensive. (Indeed, even the cheapest car can be considered a luxury).

Homes are also common, and extremely expensive.

To be fair, here's what the PHB has to say on the default setting: "practitioners of magic are rare, set apart from the masses of people by their extraordinary talent. Common folk might see evidence of magic on a regular basis, but it's usually minor-a fantastic monster, a visibly answered prayer, a wizard walking through the streets with an animated shield guardian as a bodyguard."

Adventurers such as we play in D&D are not the norm, and that holds true even in the high magic setting.

[EggKookoo]

Not so. Cars and jewelry are both common in the world, neither is inexpensive. (Indeed, even the cheapest car can be considered a luxury).

Homes are also common, and extremely expensive.

I'm not sure how common expensive jewelry really is. There's lots of the cheap stuff, and the good stuff lasts forever so you can have people wearing valuable jewelry that they didn't have to pay for, but instead inherited. There's also a lot of subjectivity to its value, like art, so I'm not sure if it really fits in any kind of normal economic structure or if it's really more of an outlier.

Cars and homes are good counterpoints, though. Perhaps it's because they're such necessities. It's hard to earn a worthwhile living in much of the U.S. unless you have a car, or you go with public transportation. Likewise, everyone needs a place to live, so you fork over a huge chunk of your cashflow for a house or even an apartment.

So if magic was a necessity like this, I could see it staying expensive. Like, if you couldn't really compete as a farmer unless you had a druid helping to manage your local ecology for you. Since everyone needs to employ a druid, the demand remains high, and the druid can charge a lot. That is, until young people start pursing careers in the druidic arts, and suddenly you can get "good enough" druid services for much less than you used to (again, unless the druids band together and ban any "unlicensed" druid activity, and make it ridiculously expensive to get a license, which would distort the market and keep druidic fees nice and high).

Homes remain expensive due to scarcity. A lot of people want to live in very dense clusters on the land (cities), so the high demand for real estate drives the value up. If you could live and earn money in the middle of northern Canada, you could get quite a house and quite a bit of land for not a lot of money, at least as far as housing prices go.

Not really sure why cars cost so much, to be honest. Must be the materials cost, which again points to a kind of scarcity reason.

If magic is like a luxury, like having a Lamborghini, it will remain relatively expensive but not be very common. This is true if learning magic is a lifetime commitment and it takes years just to be able to do some basic things, which is how it appears to me to be in D&D.

If magic is something you can learn easily, then it becomes like plumbing or landscaping -- something that's relatively inexpensive and commonplace.


To be fair, here's what the PHB has to say on the default setting: "practitioners of magic are rare, set apart from the masses of people by their extraordinary talent. Common folk might see evidence of magic on a regular basis, but it's usually minor-a fantastic monster, a visibly answered prayer, a wizard walking through the streets with an animated shield guardian as a bodyguard."

Adventurers such as we play in D&D are not the norm, and that holds true even in the high magic setting.

It seems to me what sets the PCs magic user apart is not just the level of magical power at his disposal, but the almost casual frequency with which he can use it. A common hedge magician might be able to pull off a high-power effect, but that's probably it for him for a week. A PC Wizard can do the same thing every 8 hours, at least.

[Ralanr]

Needs more antimagic.

[Vogonjeltz]

If magic is something you can learn easily, then it becomes like plumbing or landscaping -- something that's relatively inexpensive and commonplace.

Yes, except that plumbers, and by extension plumbing, is expensive despite being readily learned from any number of technical schools (i.e. schools of plumbing wizardry). And for that matter, higher education can be extremely expensive.

There are many many hospitals, and doctors and nurses are so common that no one marvels at seeing them, and yet becoming a doctor can be prohibitively expensive (hundreds of thousands in debt) and medical care can also be that way.

Druids would probably view the typical farmer as enslaving nature and distorting the natural order of things (i.e. unfavorably), such that they wouldn't consent to being hired for any sum. But that's just the orthodox take on it.


It seems to me what sets the PCs magic user apart is not just the level of magical power at his disposal, but the almost casual frequency with which he can use it. A common hedge magician might be able to pull off a high-power effect, but that's probably it for him for a week. A PC Wizard can do the same thing every 8 hours, at most.

Pcs can only benefit from a long rest once every 24 hours.

The D&D landscape is littered with the magical, but that can take many forms and doesn't extrapolate to everyone being able to teleport or access spells. There's no reason you can't modify any given campaign to exist in a world that has different types of magic shops that correlate to the type of magic they sell (for example, the magical equivalent of a gun store that only sells harmful spells) but that's going to come with some consequences as well. (How the commoner on the street views magic, if they can afford it or employ it, etc...

[EggKookoo]

Yes, except that plumbers, and by extension plumbing, is expensive despite being readily learned from any number of technical schools (i.e. schools of plumbing wizardry). And for that matter, higher education can be extremely expensive.

There are many many hospitals, and doctors and nurses are so common that no one marvels at seeing them, and yet becoming a doctor can be prohibitively expensive (hundreds of thousands in debt) and medical care can also be that way.

I suppose I should clarify. Commodities that are common become cheap. Commodities that are rare become expensive. Specialized services -- especially something oddball like medical care -- kind of work outside that system.

So if magic is like medicine, then yes, it will remain expensive. That's what I meant with the farmer/druid thing. If you need the magic user in order to survive, then it will always remain expensive because the alternative is death.

But if magic is a luxury that makes your life better but isn't really necessary to live -- maybe high speed Internet? -- then unless it distorts the market with essentially monopolistic practices -- like high speed Internet -- it should get cheaper as more supply becomes available.


Druids would probably view the typical farmer as enslaving nature and distorting the natural order of things (i.e. unfavorably), such that they wouldn't consent to being hired for any sum. But that's just the orthodox take on it.

Well, ranger, then. You get my point.

[Sigreid]

Not really sure why cars cost so much, to be honest. Must be the materials cost, which again points to a kind of scarcity reason.



Cars and homes are so expensive essentially because of the modern banking system. Since nearly anyone can get a loan for these items that they pay back over 5-30 years there is more money available to buy them and the law of supply and demand makes the price rise faster than it could without loans.

[RazDelacroix]

I'm going to pull down and examine my thread-talk-tracker down now.



Questions of discrepancy between abundance of magical classes and rarity of magical items in current edition.

Questions of dissonance between campaign settings and 5th edition mechanics.

Questions concerning real-world economic variables of supply & demand.




Yep. Seems legit. Carry on Playgrounders!

[Vogonjeltz]

I'm going to pull down and examine my thread-talk-tracker down now.



Questions of discrepancy between abundance of magical classes and rarity of magical items in current edition.

Questions of dissonance between campaign settings and 5th edition mechanics.

Questions concerning real-world economic variables of supply & demand.




Yep. Seems legit. Carry on Playgrounders!

Well, we can come full circle in that recipes are rarer than the items they make, so technically the items are common relative to the means of production

[EggKookoo]

Cars and homes are so expensive essentially because of the modern banking system. Since nearly anyone can get a loan for these items that they pay back over 5-30 years there is more money available to buy them and the law of supply and demand makes the price rise faster than it could without loans.

Also, the ability to pass on your house to your descendants distorts its value. It makes houses more common than their cost should otherwise indicate.

But right, I forgot about debt. That messes things up (in more than one way). But I would expect you could take a loan out to pay for a particularly powerful spell, too.

[Sigreid]

Also, the ability to pass on your house to your descendants distorts its value. It makes houses more common than their cost should otherwise indicate.

But right, I forgot about debt. That messes things up (in more than one way). But I would expect you could take a loan out to pay for a particularly powerful spell, too.

I wouldn't expect anyone to be eager to loan a bunch of money to a known adventurer simply do to the known hazards of their chosen profession.

[KorvinStarmast]

Questions of discrepancy between abundance of magical classes and rarity of magical items in current edition.
The disappearance of the permanency spell seems to be driving this particular issue ... you can tap into the weave, but making it stick to something inanimate is extremely difficult, probably risky.

[tieren]

On the topic of there aren't more magic items, I have been wondering why there aren't tons of more "mundane-ish" magic items. For example, a caster could cast continual flame on a lamp wick, and the lamp could be shuttered to provide an eternal bullseye lantern with no need to burn oil. Easily available magical flashlights.

Sure you need a 50 gp material component, but if magic items are so rare and precious you could surely sell such an item for more than 100 gp and any mid level cleric or wizard could crank out three of them a day with little used 2nd level slots during downtime. Its not like you're enchanting a suit or armor or something, its just casting a spell you know as intended.

[pwykersotz]

On the topic of there aren't more magic items, I have been wondering why there aren't tons of more "mundane-ish" magic items. For example, a caster could cast continual flame on a lamp wick, and the lamp could be shuttered to provide an eternal bullseye lantern with no need to burn oil. Easily available magical flashlights.

Sure you need a 50 gp material component, but if magic items are so rare and precious you could surely sell such an item for more than 100 gp and any mid level cleric or wizard could crank out three of them a day with little used 2nd level slots during downtime. Its not like you're enchanting a suit or armor or something, its just casting a spell you know as intended.

With respect to games with few/no PC classed NPC's: I'm not aware of a single monster in the manual who has that spell.

With respect to games where they are common: Seems legit.

[tieren]

With respect to games with few/no PC classed NPC's: I'm not aware of a single monster in the manual who has that spell.

With respect to games where they are common: Seems legit.

Its a second level cleric spell, any temple capable of being of use to an adventuring party for heals and disease/curse removal (let alone resurrection) should have several casters able to do it, and the trade in the magic lanterns could help fund the temple.

[Mara]

I allow moderate amounts of magic item crafting in my games. The important items generally take far too long for adventurers to ever make.

There is littler to-no market for magical items because those making them have little interest in things like increased material wealth. They either made the item for the sake of it, or they trade the item for favors.

[Xetheral]

With respect to games with few/no PC classed NPC's: I'm not aware of a single monster in the manual who has that spell.

With respect to games where they are common: Seems legit.

Even if you only build NPCs as monsters, why couldn't an NPC have that spell?

[SharkForce]

I allow moderate amounts of magic item crafting in my games. The important items generally take far too long for adventurers to ever make.

There is littler to-no market for magical items because those making them have little interest in things like increased material wealth. They either made the item for the sake of it, or they trade the item for favors.

then they're idiots, because you can use increased material wealth to buy favours or to make more items for the sake of it.

[pwykersotz]

Even if you only build NPCs as monsters, why couldn't an NPC have that spell?

They could very easily. I'm just referring to a possible explanation for the default setting.


I have been wondering why there aren't tons of more "mundane-ish" magic items.

The fact that it's something that the DM needs to insert is a fairly good reason. It could be explained in many ways. The spell is rare, the fire god hates it, pious clerics frown upon wasteful resources and the disenfranchising of local candlemakers...

But in terms of actually doing it instead of justifying why it isn't that way, I'm all for it. I might adopt something similar in my game now that this thread has put the thought there.

[SharkForce]

actually, 50 gp could buy you a lot of regular torches. like, 5000 of them iirc.

when continual light was a thing and you could cast it for free, it made sense to just make permanent lights. now, you basically do it because you don't want to carry a bunch of torches and your money can't do anything more interesting as an adventurer. the number of people who are looking far enough forward to be interested in the cost savings by the time they would've used 5000 torches are relatively few.

then there's the fact that you've made a 50 gp investment and probably placed it somewhere that's relatively easy to get at. so now you probably need to post a guard to keep someone from just walking away with your investment long before it pays for itself.

when all you needed was a rock and a level 2-3 spell slot, magic lights all over the place just made sense. at 50 gp each, not so much. should be available if a group of adventurers (or anyone else) really wants it, but i wouldn't expect it to see widespread use except in situations where you *really* don't want to risk a real fire, but need light (for example, you might see them in coal mines or if someone needs to inspect grain silos).

[EggKookoo]

I wouldn't expect anyone to be eager to loan a bunch of money to a known adventurer simply do to the known hazards of their chosen profession.

I was thinking more of my earlier farmer thing. Let's say an NPC farmer needs a high-level spell cast once at the beginning of each planting season to keep supernatural pests away. He might be able to get a loan from the local coin-monger (using his farm as collateral). Or he might even be able to get Farmer's Insurance (dum da dum dum dum dum DUM!) and pay a periodic premium to get his magic delivered each season, plus periodic upkeep spells. He might even be able to file a claim if magical vermin attack his crops.

[Sigreid]

I was thinking more of my earlier farmer thing. Let's say an NPC farmer needs a high-level spell cast once at the beginning of each planting season to keep supernatural pests away. He might be able to get a loan from the local coin-monger (using his farm as collateral). Or he might even be able to get Farmer's Insurance (dum da dum dum dum dum DUM!) and pay a periodic premium to get his magic delivered each season, plus periodic upkeep spells. He might even be able to file a claim if magical vermin attack his crops.

Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Likewise the local lord might pay for control weather and grow plants to make his lands fertile and profitable or conjure earth elemental to find good veins of gold and gems etc.

Edit: That's actually a potential reason for the percieved dissonance. A spellcaster capable of making magical items typically has many easier and faster ways to make money.

[DemonSlayer6]

I would say that most city guards are half a level of fighter or ranger. A full-time guard or knight would be level 1. Captains are roughly level 2 or 3, and in big cities these captains would logically be overseen by a couple "bosses" that hit level 5.

Similarly, most priests might be half a level of cleric. And the minister might be as high as level 3, with a big city having one person at least level 5 so as to support the existence of "Raise Dead" as a spellcasting service.

As a consequence, I think that a "1-in-100" or "1-in-200" chance is a fair assumption for characters to have class levels, with 1-in-10 or 1-in-20 being the next level up.

-----

So, my city has a population of 144,669 people. Let's assume rough 150,000 people.

750 people with a class level. (1-in-200 of above)
40 people of CL 2. (1-in-20 of above)
4 people of CL 3. (1-in-10 of above)


That doesn't sound too unreasonable, even though Syracuse is one of the major population centers in New York State. (On par with Buffalo, Albany, and Rochester in terms of people-per-square-mile).

Meanwhile, New York City has 8 million people, or 8,000,000.

40,000 people of CL 1.
2000 of CL 2.
200 of CL 3.
20 of CL 4. (1-in-10 of above)
2 of CL 5. (again 1-in-10 of above)


You would need to go to New York City to find someone capable of raising the dead. Assuming a 10-day journey, at 24 to 30 miles per day, this places a maximum range of 300 miles from New York City that you can be in order to find someone able to raise a fallen foe.

Hopefully there's a closer large town, or else you are out of luck.

In fact, once your character reaches level 6 they could probably charge for extremely-awesome skills. Including spellcasting. Which would be odd...Opal opening a motel/spa thing employing magical healing and such. Puppet shows, hypnotists, massages, things like that. And music every night! Some of it even talented, and soothing the soul in both arcane and mystical ways!

[Beleriphon]

I do think you have the right of it. The NPC you describe seems very appropriate where my preconceived notion of a 6 hp 0 level NPC would not be. Is it really easier/better/more fun to custom describe each individual this way instead of using levels like we're used to?

What were the issues that arose in 3e with commoner levels?

To be clear I was not thinking of making them fighters, just more HD and maybe some industry specific boosts (like if cooking skill was a thing). Something so that a single ranger can't show up at the town meeting and murder everyone with a single volley.

Because you just give the NPC what is appropriate for their combat stats when fighting the PCs, you don't need to worry about fiddly bits that don't matter. Mutants and Masterminds does a very similar thing. I can bang out and M&M NPC in about a minute because all I need are the player facing stats, which means defenses, attacks and relevant bonuses. A PC in M&M on the other hand has to keep within point totals, keep track of total bonuses and other attendant options as a balancing factor.

[JoeJ]

I would say that most city guards are half a level of fighter or ranger. A full-time guard or knight would be level 1. Captains are roughly level 2 or 3, and in big cities these captains would logically be overseen by a couple "bosses" that hit level 5.

Similarly, most priests might be half a level of cleric. And the minister might be as high as level 3, with a big city having one person at least level 5 so as to support the existence of "Raise Dead" as a spellcasting service.

As a consequence, I think that a "1-in-100" or "1-in-200" chance is a fair assumption for characters to have class levels, with 1-in-10 or 1-in-20 being the next level up.

-----

So, my city has a population of 144,669 people. Let's assume rough 150,000 people.

750 people with a class level. (1-in-200 of above)
40 people of CL 2. (1-in-20 of above)
4 people of CL 3. (1-in-10 of above)


That doesn't sound too unreasonable, even though Syracuse is one of the major population centers in New York State. (On par with Buffalo, Albany, and Rochester in terms of people-per-square-mile).

Meanwhile, New York City has 8 million people, or 8,000,000.

40,000 people of CL 1.
2000 of CL 2.
200 of CL 3.
20 of CL 4. (1-in-10 of above)
2 of CL 5. (again 1-in-10 of above)


You would need to go to New York City to find someone capable of raising the dead. Assuming a 10-day journey, at 24 to 30 miles per day, this places a maximum range of 300 miles from New York City that you can be in order to find someone able to raise a fallen foe.

Hopefully there's a closer large town, or else you are out of luck.

In fact, once your character reaches level 6 they could probably charge for extremely-awesome skills. Including spellcasting. Which would be odd...Opal opening a motel/spa thing employing magical healing and such. Puppet shows, hypnotists, massages, things like that. And music every night! Some of it even talented, and soothing the soul in both arcane and mystical ways!

The problem I see with these calculations is that they assume a uniform geographic distribution of NPCs. I would expect, however, that small towns would have significantly fewer people with class levels than the overall average suggests, and large cities significantly more. This would happen for the same reason that big cities have a disproportionate fraction of top entertainers, scientists, artisans, etc.: talented people tend to go to where the money is.

For example, you may have a kingdom of 20,000,000, of which only 5% (or 1,000,000) live in cities. But those 1,000,000 people might include fully 3/4 of the 100,000 NPCs with class levels, and essentially all of the ones of level 2+. So even though only 1 in 200 people overall have class levels, fully 7.5% of the urban population has them (The percentage would actually vary from city to city, but I'm simplifying). Outside the few cities, however, the proportion of NPCs with class levels drops to only 1 in 760 people.

[tieren]

Because you just give the NPC what is appropriate for their combat stats when fighting the PCs, you don't need to worry about fiddly bits that don't matter. Mutants and Masterminds does a very similar thing. I can bang out and M&M NPC in about a minute because all I need are the player facing stats, which means defenses, attacks and relevant bonuses. A PC in M&M on the other hand has to keep within point totals, keep track of total bonuses and other attendant options as a balancing factor.

I'm starting to understand.

When I see a statement like almost no NPC's have levels, my preconceived bias is that means most NPC are level 0. When in reality this edition it means most NPcs are unique with custom built stats that the DM has to figure out based on the appropriate situation.

So while the blacksmith may not have levels he could be CR2 with 5d10 hit dice and a stunning blow and the peasant who makes his life as a trapper may have expertise in nature and survival and be able to shoot a squirrel with a bow at 200 paces. I like the implications of the new system (new to me), but it is taking some time to wrap my head around.

[georgie_leech]

I'm starting to understand.

When I see a statement like almost no NPC's have levels, my preconceived bias is that means most NPC are level 0. When in reality this edition it means most NPcs are unique with custom built stats that the DM has to figure out based on the appropriate situation.

So while the blacksmith may not have levels he could be CR2 with 5d10 hit dice and a stunning blow and the peasant who makes his life as a trapper may have expertise in nature and survival and be able to shoot a squirrel with a bow at 200 paces. I like the implications of the new system (new to me), but it is taking some time to wrap my head around.

Look at it this way. Say I want to have an NPC enemy that acts as an assassin. He needs to Have, say, 60-ish HP, have +8 to hit, deal about 2d6 per hit with some extra against unaware targets. Because it seems like a thing that is very assassin-y to have, I think he should be able to knock out/stun targets if he sneaks up on them, and should have some sort of smoke bomb ability in case things go south. In 3.P, the basic rules say I need to go hunting through the books and find all the pieces I can use to fit them together, making sure that I have all that Ability Score and Skill pre-reqs for any feats I take. I need to make sure that I stick within a certain level budget, otherwise he will be too strong in other areas, but I'm also going to have to most likely use a umber of different classes. I'll also need to go through their equipment list and find appropriate magical effects, because it's almost certain that he won't function as intended without them.

In 5e, he has those stats. Done. On to the next thing...